02 January 2024 , 19:54
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The 2024 PGA Tour season gets underway later this week, with the Kapalua Plantation Course in Hawaii playing host to The Sentry Tournament.
The opener is one the PGA Tour's eight signature events, with a reduced, elite field competing for the £15.9 million ($20m) purse. Whilst 60 players qualified to compete at the Tournament, only 59 will tee it up after Rory McIlroy opted to skip the first week of the campaign.
This is not the first time the Northern Irishman has turned down the chance to play Kapalua, having missed the last three editions, with his last appearance coming back in 2019.
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McIlroy's absence will not come as a surprise to many though, after the Northern Irishman revealed he would more than likely miss the trip to Hawaii when discussing the 2024 schedule last August. "I'd say my schedule will look pretty much the same as it did this year," the four-time major winner claimed last summer.
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"I'll most likely -- I'm not a huge Hawaii guy, so I'll probably not go to Hawaii." Instead McIlroy will begin his year on the DP World Tour, teeing it up at next week's Dubai Invitational before defending his title at the Dubai Desert Classic a week later.
After his stint in the Middle East, McIlroy will finally return to the PGA Tour in the first week in February, after entering signature event No. 2 of the season, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. McIlroy will not be the only big absentee in Hawaii this week though.
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Jon Rahm will be unable to defend his Sentry title in 2024 (Getty Images)The Sentry's 2023 champion Jon Rahm will also not be in the field this Thursday, after opting to make the move to LIV Golf last month. Rahm became the latest big name to make the Saudi switch, signing a reported £450 million deal with the breakaway league.
After making the decision to sign with LIV, the Masters champion followed the same fate of the likes of Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, in being suspended by the PGA Tour. Aside from the absence of McIlroy and Rahm, 59 players will be in the field this week.
In previous years, players qualified by winning a PGA Tour event from the previous year, hence the event's former name, the 'Tournament of Champions'. This time around though, the Tour have also included the top-50 players from previous season's FedEx Cup, who did not win in 2023.
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler headlines the field, whilst a group of European Ryder Cup stars in Tommy Fleetwood, Tyrrell Hatton, Ludvig Aberg, Matt Fitzpatrick, Viktor Hovland and Justin Rose are also in the field. The full entry list can be found below.
- Patrick Cantlay
- Tommy Fleetwood
- Russell Henley
- Xander Schauffele
- Sungjae Im
- Adam Schenk
- Tyrrell Hatton
- Jordan Spieth
- Denny McCarthy
- Andrew Putnam
- Adam Svensson
- Harris English
- J.T. Poston
- Seamus Power
- Cameron Young
- Eric Cole
- Byeong Hun An
- Adam Hadwin
- Tom Hoge
- Brendon Todd
- Cam Davis
- Patrick Rodgers
- Mackenzie Hughes
- Hideki Matsuyama
- Ludvig Åberg
- Akshay Bhatia
- Keegan Bradley
- Sam Burns
- Wyndham Clark
- Corey Conners
- Jason Day
- Nico Echavarria
- Tony Finau
- Matt Fitzpatrick
- Rickie Fowler
- Lucas Glover
- Emiliano Grillo
- Nick Hardy
- Brian Harman
- Lee Hodges
- Max Homa
- Viktor Hovland
- Si Woo Kim
- Tom Kim
- Chris Kirk
- Kurt Kitayama
- Luke List
- Taylor Moore
- Collin Morikawa
- Vincent Norrman
- Davis Riley
- Justin Rose
- Scottie Scheffler
- Sepp Straka
- Nick Taylor
- Sahith Theegala
- Erik van Rooyen
- Camilo Villegas
- Matt Wallace