The PGA Tour kicks off the 2025 season in Maui, Hawaii for the Sentry Tournament of Champions. All winners from the prior season, as well as those who qualified for the second round of the FedEx Cup playoffs, make up the field of 60 players, although there will be some notable omissions this year. Scottie Scheffler suffered a hand injury last week, and Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood and Shane Lowry have opted not to play. With that being said, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, Ludvig Aberg and others headline a field of the PGA Tour’s top talent.

The Plantation Course at Kapalua remains the host venue, and the Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw design offers inviting fairways and large, undulating green complexes. Birdies will be the name of the game this week, as Kapalua has played as one of the three easiest courses on the PGA Tour each of the last three seasons. 2025 will be no different, as negligible wind should provide ideal scoring conditions once again in Maui. Prepare for a shootout, as the 2025 PGA Tour season is sure to kick off with a bang.

Lintao Zhang

With the WD of Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele is the clear top-option in this field, and he is actually priced quite reasonably. Not only is Schauffele a former winner of this event, but he is also one of the best putters in this field, and a player I fully trust to keep pace in a birdie-fest.

Fade: Hideki Matsuyama, $9,600:

While there will be spots to deploy Hideki Matsuyama as the season progresses, the Sentry Tournament of Champions is not one of them. Matsuyama finished close to the bottom of the field last year at this event because he lost nearly 10 strokes putting, and that type of volatility yields an incredibly low floor.

$8,000 range Play: Byeong Hun An, $8,400:

Icon Sportswire

Byeong Hun An is one of my favorite 2025 breakout candidates, and Kapalua is the perfect venue for the 33-year-old. He finished fourth at this event last year, gaining strokes in all four major categories, and his putter has vastly improved in 2024. I’m expecting big things from An this week in Maui.

Fade: Corey Conners, $8,700:

Similar to Matsuyama, I far prefer Corey Conners on golf courses that emphasize driving accuracy and middle iron play, and Kapalua does not remotely fall into that category. Conners has finished middle of the pack in all three of his appearances at Kapalua, and I would expect a similar outcome this year as well.

Jared C. Tilton

While this will be Taylor Pendrith’s first appearance at Kapalua, I love this golf course for the Canadian. Pendrith hits the ball a mile off the tee, is an excellent putter, and has had a ton of success in easy scoring conditions, including a victory last year at the CJ Cup presented by Byron Nelson.

Fade: Si Woo Kim, $7,800:

Si Woo Kim has largely struggled at Kapalua, which makes sense given his lack of reliability with the flat-stick. I prefer Kim on short, positional golf courses such as TPC Sawgrass and Sedgefield, and I will be waiting to deploy the former Players champion until at least next week at Waialae.

Flier: Max Homa, $7,100:

Similar to Patrick Cantlay, I’m expecting a rebound year for Max Homa, and Kapalua, a golf course where he has performed admirably, feels like a perfectly soft landing. Homa already began to show some positive signs toward the end of last year, and he has a strong resume of success on the West Coast during the early part of the season.

Michael Reaves

Eric Cole is always a statistical darling in my modeling, and Kapalua is another golf course that seems to perfectly fit his game. Cole’s greatest weakness is driving, but he is an excellent wedge player and putter. Cole should be perfectly comfortable in Maui, as Kapalua devalues total driving in exchange for wedge play and putting.

Andy Lack is a PGA Tour writer and podcaster from New York City who now resides in Los Angeles. He Andy is the founder and CEO of Inside Sports Network, a website devoted to the predictive quality of advanced analytics and golf course architecture. He came to Golf Digest’s betting panel after previously writing for Run Pure Sports, RickRunGood.com, the Score and GolfWRX. In his free time, Andy can likely be found on a golf course. Follow him on Twitter: @adplacksports

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com