KAPALUA, Hawaii – After birdieing half the holes at Kapalua Resort’s Plantation Course on Saturday along with an eagle for an 11-under 62, Hideki Matsuyama never cracked a smile. The 32-year-old Japanese star also declined to speak separately to the Japanese media, a dedicated crew that follows his every shot and hangs on his every word, for the second straight day. And this was – we repeat – after a bogey-free 62 that set a tournament 54-hole scoring mark and equaled the Tour record too.
“I mean, he was matching me (Saturday) shot for shot, and I felt like I was playing lights out, right?” said Collin Morikawa, who had matched Matsuyama shot for shot and didn’t bother to hit another ball at the range. “Like, yes, you could leave some shots out there, but you shoot 11-under on any golf course, you’re going to be happy, right?”
Matsuyama, however, is his own toughest critic and he high-tailed it to the range to iron out the flaws he perceived in his game. What could he possibly need to do at the range is a head scratcher, but Matsuyama said he needed to fix his driver and we’ll take his word because it worked. The grind never ends, and very few can match Matsuyama’s grit and determination to scrape every ounce of brilliance out of his game.
All the hard work paid off on Sunday when Matsuyama took dead aim at the par-4 fourth hole and two-hopped a wedge from 107 yards into the hole for an eagle.
The mercurial Matsuyama, who has a well-earned reputation for hanging his head or dropping a hand off his club in disgust, only for the shot in question to be a thing of beauty, stared down his approach at the fourth and knocked knuckles with his caddie when it dropped. He closed in 8-under 65 to win The Sentry, the season-opening tournament on the PGA Tour by three shots over Morikawa, and notch his third victory in a signature event in the last 10 months.
Morikawa, who shot a final-round 67 despite his putter cooling off, reached the par-5 15th in two and made birdie to trim his deficit to two but once Matsuyama wedged inside 4 feet at 16 to stretch the lead to three, Morikawa sensed that he wasn’t going to catch Matsuyama. He settled for his second runner-up at The Sentry in the last three years.
“Excuse my language, but 35-under par is, that’s low,” said Morikawa, dropping an F-bomb for emphasis. “Today he just never let up.”
Wearing his Sunday yellow, the color of his university back in Japan, Matsuyama closed in style with an 8-foot birdie putt to set the all-time 72-hole scoring record in relation to par with a total of 35-under 257.
“That last putt, it felt like if I make it, then it’s going to be the record, so I’m so happy that it went in,” Matsuyama said.
Matsuyama previously won the Sony Open in Hawaii in 2022, and his Sentry title made him the seventh player to win the Hawaiian Slam. To earn the 11th Tour victory of his career, Matsuyama’s game fired on all cylinders. He ranked first in Stroke Gained: Tee to green, second in SG: Approach the green and third in scrambling and SG: Putting.
Matsuyama, who loves to tinker with putters and said he traveled to Maui with four different options, inserted a Scotty Cameron 009M CS prototype putter that he’d seen another player use and received shortly after Christmas into the bag for the first time this week.
“I thought, ‘Oh, this looks good,’ so I had them make one,” he explained of the putter change on Thursday.
His putter delivered on Sunday. After Morikawa hit a beauty to 10 feet at the par-3 11th green, Matsuyama poured in a 31-foot birdie putt and one hole later he rolled in a 21-foot birdie putt to build his lead to four. He even waved to the crowd in delight.
“When the heat is on, he’s nails,” said Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee.
And when the final putt dropped at 18 to break Cameron Smith’s 72-hole scoring record from the 2022 Sentry, Matsuyama’s caddie Shota Hayafuji celebrated the special week as only he can. Hayafuji, who famously took his hat off and bowed after placing the flagstick back in the hole at 18 when Matsuyama won the 2021 Masters, showed more emotion this time, bumping chests with Mikito Kiromiya, Matsuyama’s golf coach, before lifting him into his arms and then leaping into the arms of Yuyu Suzaki, another member of Matsuyama’s support team. Matsuyama was mid-interview as this was happening but the corners of his mouth turned upward.
At last, he had reason to smile.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: hideki-matsuyama-wins-the-2025-sentry-pga-tour-record
