The PGA Tour has not been the best at playing it as it lies.

Kapalua’s Plantation Course is open for business and the hackers who stand on the 18th tee needing a par to break 100 can rest assured that they are doing something that the best players in the world seem to be incapable of just by daring to tee it up.

The PGA’s Sentry golf tournament will skip a year because of a drought and logistical concerns, saying that the course will not be up to the tour’s standards. I’m sure the optic of having the country club set playing their silly game in the middle of a drought had something to do with it, but man vs. nature promised a hell of a show.

Of course, in a perfect world every course would give us the same feeling I get on the first tee at 360° Ewa Beach, where the lush fairways stretch through an old kiawe forest all the way past North Road and the greens are as true as anywhere. For special occasions, Ko Olina, Kapolei and the Turtle Bay Palmer are the choices and pristine course conditions are the primary factor.

Yet when the PGA agronomy team took a September vacation in Hawaii and deemed Kapalua would remain unplayable for the world’s best three months later, it dealt me a blow. Signature event or not, it was never truly a real tournament, rather a wrapup to silly season but one of the most entertaining on the calendar.

Tiger vs. the Big Easy in 2000. Bubba going driver-driver on 18. How far would Max Homa’s 477-yard drive on No. 7 last year have traveled if there was no pesky grass in the way? Woods unleashed a 498-yard poke on 18 in 2002.

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The writing had been on the wall long before the sponsor and the PGA decided it wanted no part of Hawaii politics. The field expanded from winners-only to include losers from the Tour Championship in 2021, watering down the field if not the grass. Last year Ludvig Aberg started his year on Tuesday in the Tomorrow’s Golf League (An indoor simulator circuit founded by Woods and Rory McIlroy) opener in Florida before teeing it up on Maui on Thursday. This time Hawaii favorites Keegan Bradley and Hideki Matsuyama are spared that hectic start — hopefully they choose to play in their regular spots at the Sony Open in Hawaii rather than fly to Dubai for the DP World Tour’s competing event.

Sure, there are logistics involved, but the same equipment will be in its usual place at Waialae Country Club a week later as it has been for the past 25 years.

Two teams in Major League Baseball can play in minor league venues for an entire season and the National Football League can try to avoid the hazards of the FieldTurf at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey every week, yet the world’s top linksmen can’t pick it clean off Maui’s red dirt? It reminds me of NASCAR, where some of the best drivers in the world need to park their car when rain falls on their track. Old Tom Morris would have definitely not approved.

A big part of what makes the Sentry so special is the course, a layout where the contour of the third green was designed to mimic a Maui onion potato chip and the elevation is such that Tiger Woods and friends bet his caddie, Stevie Williams, that he couldn’t run the back nine and touch every tee box and green in 30 minutes. He accomplished it in 28.

It is annually the easiest course on the tour, but it stands out on the circuit it because it is so different. With the exception of Pebble Beach, Augusta National and a few signature holes at TPC Scottsdale and TPC Sawgrass, PGA Tour tracks all have a certain sameness. That’s why we remember the USGA’s 2015 U.S. Open on crusty Chambers Bay and the 2006 Open Championship on a baked links at Royal Liverpool that Woods, who relishes his muni golf roots as much as anything, prevailed despite hitting driver only once.

Kapalua’s web site has a live camera of the first tee at golfatkapalua.com/live-views/ with the emerald grass, azure ocean and a perfect blue sky rising over dry Molokai. You can’t really judge a lot from one view of a tee box and none of the greens, but even if they drag a garden hose over the Bermuda like Kahuku Golf Course does, I’d hit that and I would happily play it as it lies.

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Reach Jerry Campany at jcampany@staradvertiser.com.