Gary and Evelyn Eng love golf, and they love Hawaii.

They are avid golfers, and Evelyn was born and raised on Oahu. That’s why the retired couple who live in Bellevue, Wash., were among the more than 1,000 volunteers who helped make the Sony Open in Hawaii happen last week.

They got an up-close view of some of their favorite PGA Tour players, and Gary even got to chat with some of them.

“I had a really cool job, picking up golfers at their hotel and bringing them (to Waialae Country Club),” he said.

Although the Engs have spent January in Hawaii the past six years, this is the first time they volunteered at the tournament. One reason they did this time was they knew it could be their last chance.

“If this is the last one, it’s sad for a lot of reasons,” Evelyn said. “The volunteers are a real community. Those who are local are proud to host, and there are many volunteers from all over the world who come every year. We even had one from Belgium. One (fellow volunteer) I’d met had never been to Hawaii before. The lead person for our group lives in Florida but was born and raised in Wahiawa. This gives her a reason to come back.

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“I will really be bummed if it doesn’t come back,” Evelyn added. “Because now that we’ve done it, I want to do it again.”

Chris Gotterup said basically the same thing on Sunday, after he won the tournament.

As has been widely reported for months, the PGA Tour’s new leadership is looking at compressing its schedule. And the Hawaii events — at Kapalua on Maui and Waialae Country Club on Oahu — are among those most likely to be deleted, partly because they are among the most expensive to stage. Also, TV ratings have gone down because the Sony Open has gone up against the NFL playoffs on Saturday and Sunday.

Mark Rolfing, known as Hawaii’s Mr. Golf nationally, is not giving up on adjusting what some people think is already a done deal. The longtime golf broadcaster and former Kapalua pro has brokered sports deals before, when his marketing firm worked with the Hawaii Tourism Authority. He hopes he’s got at least one more to make, for at least one more year of a PGA Tour event in Hawaii.

At the very least, that scheduling will have to change, even if Hawaii somehow gets to keep one or both events. The PGA Tour’s Future Competition Committee, chaired by Tiger Woods, has drafted a schedule that would not have to compete with the NFL playoffs for TV viewership.

The Tour has not announced any schedule changes yet, but Golf Digest reported that the Hawaii events were not on a blueprint for 2027 that Woods’ committee came up with, according to unidentified sources. Woods did say he did not know if all of the changes the committee wants can be done before the start of next year.

That leaves a window for what Rolfing calls “the perfect scenario,” at least short-term for Hawaii.

It would entail starting the 2027 season in Hawaii, probably at Waialae, during the week of Feb. 1 to 7, and playing the tournament from Tuesday through Friday. That way, the next week’s tournament, the WM Phoenix Open, could start on Wednesday and end Saturday, the day before the Super Bowl.

This would avoid competition between golf and the NFL postseason for viewers, because the Hawaii event would be during the week of the Pro Bowl.

For this to work, the tournament at Torrey Pines in San Diego — which loses its title sponsor after next week’s event — would be displaced, Rolfing said.

“I spent a lot of time with everybody; the Sony people, PGA people, and talked to a lot of players. There’s tremendous support to try to have one more Sony,” Rolfing said. “(Sony is) asking for one year (as a title sponsor), which I never heard of the PGA doing. But there is tremendous pressure that in the end could make a difference here. I wish that was the case on Maui, too.”

But Kapalua was canceled for this year because the course was dried out due to drought conditions and a water rights conflict that has yet to be resolved.

Gov. Josh Green and others also have not given up on trying to keep PGA Tour events in Hawaii. Before Sony became the title sponsor in 1999, what was known as the Hawaiian Open has been part of the Tour since 1965. Also in the late 1990s, what was then called the Tournament of Champions started at Kapalua’s Plantation course.

Since the Maui event featured winners of events from the previous year and the tourney at Waialae was the first regular PGA Tour tournament of the year, Hawaii essentially hosted the all-star game and opening day of a major sport, every year.

Some years, Lloyd “Flash” Yonemura would volunteer at both — and other pro golf tournaments on Oahu, flying from his home on Molokai on his own dime.

“I have in-laws and my kids on Oahu and my parents’ old home on Maui,” said the retired Molokai High School teacher and registrar. “I think the loss of the Sony would affect me, the void it would create in the week that I spend over on Oahu. I’ll miss the opportunities that won’t be there anymore to meet some great people.”

If and when the PGA Tour does leave, what about other organizations, like the Asian Tour? Hideki Matsuyama’s galleries are always among the biggest, and the 2022 Sony Open and 2025 Sentry champion attracts plenty of media attention from his home country of Japan. Other Asian stars are also on the rise.

“Funny you should mention that,” said Glenn Wakai, vice chair of the state Senate’s committee on economic development and tourism, on Monday. “I just met with the governor’s chief of staff about that. We should take a serious look at any tour that is willing to work with us. Even LIV.”

PGA Tour members are generally not prohibited from playing in events on most other tours if there is no schedule conflict, and if the PGA Tour does compress to 20-25 events from the current 34, there will be many more open weeks. This creates opportunities especially in Hawaii, with its year-round golf-friendly climate.

Rolfing said he thinks it might be too late to ask for help from the Legislature, which starts its 2026 session today, especially since some lawmakers have already pushed back hard on funding to pay University of Hawaii athletes.

He was recently quoted saying what the PGA Tour is doing with Hawaii is “not a red warning, this is a fire-engine red warning.”

So, after talking with as many stakeholders as possible, he hopes the proposal for one more PGA Tour event in Hawaii, in 2027, will fly … and then go from there.

“Pro Bowl week. That’s the week we want,” Rolfing said.

And that in itself is pretty ironic, or fitting, depending on how you want to look at it. When the Pro Bowl was somewhat like an actual football game and played here at Aloha Stadium, for decades, Rolfing helped negotiate one of the contracts.