KAPALUA, Hawaii – Maui weatherman Guy Hagi apologized to The Sentry pro-am participants on Wednesday evening during the competition’s award ceremony. He joked that he was off by one degree in the forecast.
“This week we’ve got the best weather on the planet,” he said. “We never get below 70 degrees and we never hit 90. We’re right in the sweet spot, where you want to hit the golf ball.”
Hagi nailed his forecast for tournament play at The Sentry so far, predicting that the winds that gave Kapalua Resort’s Plantation Course some bite on Thursday would lay down on Friday for the second round and lead to a birdie bonanza.
Scoring was so low that Russell Henley, who shot 4-under 69, said he felt as if he got lapped by the field. After all, Sepp Straka made seven birdies in a row to start the back nine. “Felt like I shot 3 over today,” Henley said.
Maverick McNealy called the course “gettable,” and his grouping with JT Poston and Davis Thompson got after it. “Our group was 27-under combined,” said McNealy, pointing out that all three players carded scores of 9-under 64. “It just felt like I was playing solid but had to keep making birdies just to keep up with JT and Davis.”
The field of 59 at the Tour’s season-opening event is trying to keep up with Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama, who was bogey-free on Friday and is setting the pace at 16-under 130 after a second straight 65.
“Seems like Hideki is trying to birdie every hole out there, so it was nice to kind of keep up the pace with him a little bit,” said Tom Hoge, who shot 68 and sits T-3 with Corey Conners (66), Collin Morikawa (65) and McNealy.
“I think I need to get to 28 (under) at least with the wind forecast,” McNealy added.
As Hoge noted, the greens are rolling perfectly and the fairways are firm, setting up a lot of short-iron approaches.
“You feel like if you get within 10, 15 feet you got a great chance to make ’em,” Hoge said.
But U.S. Ryder Cup Captain Keegan Bradley, who shot one of eight rounds of 64 on Friday, said it’s not as easy as it looks pouring in all those birdies.
“It’s tough,” Bradley said. “It’s just as tough as a having to shoot 5 under to win. It’s just a different type of difficult. You got to keep making birdies, you got to keep going, that can be difficult.”
Friday was a birdie-fest and with benign conditions in the forecast, the weekend will be a challenge of how low can you go.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Birdie-fest in Maui as Hideki Matsuyama leads The Sentry 2025
