As Hideki Matsuyama raced to an apparent victory at The Sentry, the season-opening PGA Tour event, another story was emerging: He was making a run at Cam Smith’s 72-hole PGA Tour scoring record of 34 under. What follows is a live diary as it played out in Kapalua, where Matsuyama made birdie on the 72nd hole to capture his 11th PGA Tour victory.

Hole 13: Matsuyama at -33

Good evening from Durham, N.C., six time zones east and 40 degrees colder than Kapalua, where on my computer screen Hideki Matsuyama is chasing history. Specifically, he’s hot on the heels of the PGA Tour scoring record, measured to par. It’s not exactly a massive surprise that somebody’s making a run in Hawaii—there have been six players who finished a 72-hole tour event at 30 under or better, and five of those have come at Kapalua’s Plantation Course at this very tournament (the outlier is Dustin Johnson, who reached 30 under at TPC Boston in 2020). Remarkably, three of the five Kapalua gems came in 2022, when Cam Smith emerged just ahead of his competitors at 34 under. That scintillating four-day stretch remains the tour record, even though Smith departed for LIV not long after.

Today, that could go down. After a Saturday 62, Hideki Matsuyama has shown no signs of slowing down, and this whole thing started to feel a lot like destiny in the last two holes, when he buried a 30-footer for birdie on 11 and followed that with a 21-footer on 12. While Kapalua is quite clearly an easy course by tour standards, those are not easy putts to make, and as I sit here and type it seems clear that there’s some Hawaii magic at play.

And yet, Collin Morikawa is still just four back! The range of outcomes for Hideki, from history to a painful second, is still pretty wide.

The minute I typed that last sentence, Morikawa began to yell “no, NO!” at an errant approach into the green. Sorry, Collin, my jinx works fast.

Hideki followed with a poor approach of his own from 90 yards, and he’ll need another bomb to keep the score moving into the stratosphere … which he does not get, settling for par. In other news, it is very windy on the water.

Two other thoughts: it blows my mind that Sungjae Im hasn’t won on tour since 2021, and also, I will never stop mispronouncing Thomas Detry’s last name as Dee-try.

Hole 14: Matsuyama at -33

Ludvig Aberg just closed out his tournament with a 63, good for fourth place (for now), and this seems like a year where he could win three events and a major … although he might need a few more kitchen accidents from Scottie Scheffler.

Hideki’s drive was a pull, but it avoided the bunker by a few feet and looks like it’s sitting up in the rough. That’s good news, and so is the fact that this is an incredibly short hole, meaning he’s got just 73 feet to the green. That’s the secret sauce of Kapalua, I think—there are a ton of holes where it’s impossible to imagine a player with any form making bogey.

And folks, we’ve got a potential birdie alert: his pitch from the rough was brilliant, running past the hole where a slope funneled it six feet from the hole.

Elsewhere, Will Zalatoris has played a wrong ball, which seems like an astounding mistake for a PGA Tour pro to make. It also screwed Cam Davis going next, who didn’t even consider that Zalatoris might have made the mistake, also played the wrong ball, and got penalized. The two-stroke demerit was particularly brutal for Davis, who just fell out of the top five.

Back to the main action, where Morikawa makes his birdie with a sandy up-and-down, and Matsuyama … misses by an agonizing inch on the right. NOOOOO.

We’re now in tense times. There are some extremely birdie-able holes left, but some actual tough ones too. One bogey probably ends the dream, but he’s also a single birdie from reaching a score that only one man has seen before. And guess what: Morikawa is now in position to be the eighth player to post a score of 30 under for 72 holes. Wild!

Maddie Meyer

Hole 15

OK, here’s the big chance. As Dan Hicks just pointed out on tv, it’s the second-easiest hole by today’s scores, and pretty much everyone is making birdie or better at this 551-yard par-5. The field is at 35 under on this hole today alone, which coincidentally is exactly the number Hideki is chasing. And might I add, the hole is beautiful, with the sparse cook pines (I think that’s what they are, anyway) and mountains in the background.

Hideki and Morikawa both crush their drives. That’s step one. I’m getting the feeling we’re about to see 34 under …

… before we get there, though, Justin Thomas carded a 63, which is excellent to see, and Keegan Bradley just finished at 21 under, which continues the comedy of an out-of-nowhere pick for Ryder Cup captain making a serious run at qualifying for the team. I still can’t fathom how this is going to work logistically.

Uh-oh. Hideki just pushed the hell out of his second. But although I say “uh-oh,” this is Kapalua, so all it means is that instead of an eagle putt he has a relatively simple pitch and the absolute worst he can make is par.

A bigger problem is that Morikawa just reached in two and will have an eagle putt. I think the man is officially charging.

Matsuyama’s pitch is just so-so, to 10 feet, and if Morikawa can bury this eagle, we might have a one-shot ballgame, and two guys within range of the tour scoring record.

He can’t, but it’s a tap-in birdie, and now this birdie putt feels pretttttty big for Hideki … he’s backing off, studying it from every angle, the tension’s building … and it’s about an acre left. No good. It’s a two-shot ballgame, folks.

On a side note, you can count on one hand how many greens Morikawa has missed, which seems to indicate his irons are among the best in the game yet again, and when that happens, the man is usually winning a major or coming close.

Hole 16: Matsuyama at -33

The announcers have been talking about Morikawa’s huge collapse at the 2023 Sentry quite a lot, and that mojo seems to have caught up with him, as he drives it straight into the fairway bunker. Hideki has the same potential pitfall, distance-wise, but he plays a terrific draw between the bunkers and is sitting pretty.

Elsewhere, Jhonattan Vegas, age 40, just finished with a birdie to grab solo fourth. His 3M Open win last year felt at least a little fluke-y, for sure, but maybe this is the first step in showing that he’s got some moves left.

As if proving the theory that there are no actual punishments in Kapalua, Morikawa is safely on the green with an okay look at birdie, fairway bunker be damned.

BUT HIDEKI’S IN TIGHT!!! From 98 yards, he landed it just past the hole, missed the flag by less than a foot, and spun it back to four feet.

Matsuyama answers!@HidekiOfficial_ nearly jars it to extend his lead to 3 at No. 16.

📺 GOLF Channel pic.twitter.com/SmnJHcOfP8

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) January 6, 2025

This one HAS to go … but we’ll wait a bit, as first Morikawa has to give a little too much respect to his downhill bender and settles for par, and then Detry blows a birdie putt way past, and THEN the stage is set, and FOLKS HE’S AT 34 UNDER!!

Only one other person has ever been there, at this very course, and with another birdie in the last two holes Matsuyama will be in uncharted waters. Plus, it seems very much like he has the tournament under wraps.

Hole 17: Matsuyama at -34

Dan Hicks was just talking about how Matsuyama is very succinct with the press, which is an understatement, and while I like this play-by-play format for a moment like this, I’ll also own up to the fact that part of my motivation was saving myself from having to make a story from the Matsuyama transcript.

While we wait for their tee shots, I have to ask: has anyone solved the mystery of Cameron Young? (And no, I don’t mean the mystery of why his full name appears on the leaderboard, which I asked yesterday in an offhand way on Twitter and which now has 1,800 likes and almost 400,000 views somehow … the internet is very weird.) I mean the mystery of who this guy is, why he struggles under pressure, or what makes him tick. Does he hate golf? Love golf, too much? In some ways he feels like the most inscrutable guy on tour.

OK, now we move to the longest par-4 in the history of the universe (or something close to it). Hideki, needing a solid drive, finds the rough but in a way that shouldn’t kill him. And despite the absurd hole length, 548 yards today, it’s so far downhill that he’ll only have 152 left.

On a personal note, I have been having trouble getting any distance off the tee this winter (the cold air is murdering me) and it’s actively offensive to see the graphic showing Hideki’s carry distance on that drive: 342 yards. That should be illegal.

Morikawa and his caddie J.J. Jakovac just had a long conversation about club selection on the approach, and every bit of it was fascinating. I could watch caddie convos all day. Can we just mic these guys up at every tournament and have a dedicated YouTube channel for compilations? It’s a billion-dollar idea.

Ooooh, Hideki just hit a quietly brilliant approach that landed maybe ten yards short of the green and trickled on. He didn’t leave himself the easiest putt—it’s 18 feet—but barring a disaster he’s going to go to 18 with a serious chance at the record.

Meanwhile, this is not Thomas Detry’s fault, and it’s not the tour’s fault, but when I’m focusing on watching Hideki and Morikawa fight it out, it’s incredibly annoying to have a third wheel interrupting the action. Again, nobody’s fault! But I can’t help wanting the rules officials to pull him aside and make him wait a hole.

Hey, remember when I said, barring disaster? Matsuyama just blew his birdie putt unforgivably far past the hole, turning a routine par into a stress test. Six feet! But, thank goodness, he sneaks it in the right side.

We’re going to 18 with the record on the line!

Maddie Meyer

Hole 18: Matsuyama at -34

This famous par-5 is, like 17, absurdly long at 678 yards. Nevertheless, you can make birdie here; Cam Davis did it, Maverick McNealy did it, and nobody at the top of the leaderboard seems to be making worse than par. And what a view, looking down at the Pacific! Golf Digest editors, if you’re reading this, please send me there.

And YES, the drive by Matsuyama is a bomb! As you might imagine from the gaudy length, this hole too is downhill, so the final tally on the drive is 414 yards, eating off a great big chunk of that huge number. He’s still got 244 left, though, so it’s not like this is a gimme birdie. What will he do? Lay up? A classic Hideki 3-wood where he looks furious after the swing but it lands 10 feet away? Something else?

I might be alone on this, but for me? Harry Hall has to drop the flat cap. It’s too much like old-timey cosplay, a little try-hard to feel natural. Moving on …

Out of nowhere, while we wait in the fairway, Sungjae Im now has a shot at 30 under with an eagle putt on the green … and runs it just past. Tantalizing! And it’s tied for the fourth-best score ever at this course, at least until Morikawa and Hideki finish in five minutes.

Matsuyama is now one (admittedly exceptional) approach from basically guaranteeing himself the record. If he can only reach the green … which Morikawa just did, setting up a plausible eagle chance. And while we’re all thinking about the record, Hideki is also just one shot away from inviting the dreaded three-shot swing into the realm of reality. And here we go …

… and he plays it super safe, to the right side, a few yards off the green. On one hand, it just won him the tournament, because he’s never making bogey from there. Which is obviously the most important thing if you’re not me, blogging about the scoring record. On the other, I am that guy, and I now put his chance at the outright record at around 50 percent, where if he was anywhere on the green, it would be way higher. The man is keeping us on tenterhooks.

And the tenterhooks still have us after the chip, which is a solid B+ but leaves him with eight feet left for birdie. It all comes down to a single putt. What a dream. Morikawa misses his eagle, which theoretically gives Hideki the freedom to give it a run, knowing a three-putt won’t kill him. And now it’s time … one putt for the outright record.

IT’S GOOD! HE HITS HIT! WE’VE GOT A NEW RECORD HOLDER, FOLKS!!!!! A;SLDKJFWA;LKEJ;ALJF;SDAJAKJDF!!!!!!

Hideki sets the PGA TOUR score-to-par record 🏆 pic.twitter.com/MV0YBRDkSV

— Golfbet (@Golfbet) January 6, 2025

What a ridiculous tournament this man just had, with a Sunday 65 as the cherry on top! I don’t care how easy a course is, averaging a birdie almost every two holes is absurd. Nobody on this tour has ever done better, to par, and it ended with incredible fireworks. What a player, and what a terrific way to start the PGA Tour season.

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com