were most notable last week<\/a>. In September, the Tour announced the season kickoff Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua (Maui) would be canceled as the course was suffering due to a water dispute. It is bizarre and yet not surprising that manmade resorts built on a wonder of nature taken from indigenous people would cause lawsuits over use of natural resources. There is both brash and nuance in the issue – I\u2019m just disappointed the golf didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\nSo the Tour season opener is now this week, but still in Hawaii as has been the tradition. So let\u2019s see what\u2019s in store:<\/p>\n
Tournament: The Sony Open, January 15-18, 2026.<\/p>\n
Course: Waialae Country Club, par 70, 7,044 yards. A short course by today\u2019s standards, almost completely flat topography, but tight doglegs, tall palm trees, and ocean winds can make it difficult<\/p>\n
Purse: $9,100,000 in total, with $1,638,000 to the winner.<\/p>\n
Defending Champ: Nick Taylor. The Canadian (whose silhouette was incorporated into the RBC Canadian Open\u2019s logo) won in a playoff over Colombian (and Arkansas Razorback) Nico Echavarria. 10 former Bulldogs were in the field, with 4 finishing top 30 (Brian Harman, Sepp Straka, Keith Mitchell, Russell Henley) and 1 with a top 10 (Henley).<\/p>\n
Fun Fact: This tournament is the 2nd oldest on Tour, and has been held at Waialae since 1965. Here in 1983 Isao Aoki became the first Asian and Japanese player to win on the PGA Tour.<\/p>\n
TV Times: Thursday through Sunday, 7:00 pm ET – 10:00 pm ET.<\/p>\n
\u2018Dawgs in the Field: 4. Brian Harman, Russell Henley, Chris Kirk, Keith Mitchell. Brendon Todd is an alternate.<\/p>\n
The Sony is considered a \u201cfull-field\u201d event, though it will only include 120 players. In an effort to make players think there\u2019s more money to win, they\u2019ve spread essentially the same purse to a few less players. Full Tour membership was only granted to the top 100 players from last year, and those on the outside have a complicated pecking order of using their conditional status to get into tournaments. Brendon Todd and Greyson Sigg unfortunately fall into this category. And some players were able to improve their status during the official\/unofficial \u201cPGA Tour Fall\u201d series.<\/p>\n
With different status of those ranked 101-125 from those 126-150 and so on, it is fairly complicated to figure out who will be eligible and get entry into any given week. The good news is that Henley, Harman, Straka, Mitchell, Harris English, Davis Thompson, and Chris Kirk should be frequent competitors, with Todd and Sigg sneaking in here and there.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re head is swirling trying to keep up with the transfer portal, you resent Indiana\u2019s success, you don\u2019t really care for the NFL, and basketball hasn\u2019t quite taken hold of your sports-watching attention, you can always kick back and watch some former \u2018Dawgs chasing little white balls. And from the comfort of your recliner on a chilly January night. Enjoy, and as always\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to the 2026 PGA Tour schedule! And my 11th season (I think) of \u2018Dawgs on Tour. There…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,173022,622,82],"class_list":["post-411235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-georgia-bulldogs-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}