Chris Kirk opens 2024 with Victory at The Sentry | The Sunday Swing

The Sunday Swing
Jan. 7th, 2024 

Welcome back to an Aloha edition of the Sunday Swing! This week marks the exciting start of the 2024 PGA Tour season. This year’s edition of The Sentry from The Plantation Course at Kapalua features a 59-player field and Signature event status giving it a $20 million dollar purse. Signature events also allow players an opportunity for extra FedEx Cup points. It’s certainly an exciting way to kick off 2024, and what better a place than Maui.

The Sentry (Tournament of Champions) - Tournament History 

The Sentry was initially founded back in 1953 and has marked the calendar year opening of the PGA Tour season since. Typically this event features small fields as only the winners from the previous season were invited, but now the Tour has opened it up to winners and the previous season’s top-50 players in the FedEx Cup standings. The Plantation Course at Kapalua is probably the easiest course that the players see throughout the season, with incredibly wide fairways, massive greens, and large downhill tee shots that generate birdies and eagles in bunches. 

To put it into perspective how good scoring has been in this tournament, there has only been one winning score that wasn’t double digits under par since 1993. More often than not, the winning score is more than 20-under par. A couple years ago we saw Cam Smith set the PGA Tour Tournament scoring record here when he shot a blistering 34-under par for the week (still only winning by one over Jon Rahm). Throughout the years a lot of big names have hoisted this trophy including Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Tom Watson, Johnny Miller, and Tiger Woods. More recently however, the previous five winners of this event are as follows: 

2024 - Chris Kirk (-29)
2023 - Jon Rahm (-27)
2022 - Cameron Smith (-34)
2021 - Harris English (-25)
2020 - Juston Thomas (-14) 

The Big Swing

To open the 2024 calendar year the Big Swing belongs to Chris Kirk. Kirk is an incredible story on the PGA Tour. The 38-year-old American has been through battles with depression and alcoholism which nearly led to him quitting golf entirely. He ended up taking some time away from the game to better himself, where he went a full three months without even touching a golf club. 

Last February we finally saw Kirk breakthrough again for the first time since 2015 at the Honda Classic. He went on to have a successful 2022-23 season, including four top-10s and eight top-25s, along with his Honda Classic win. Although Kirk’s comeback story is a good one, when looking at this field he doesn’t stand out as a player you’d expect to win – especially it being his first time back at this event in seven years. To win this week he would have to take down the likes of Scottie Scheffler, Viktor Hovland, Jordan Spieth, Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay,  and the rest of last year’s top 50 and winners.

As the tournament began, scores were as low as we expected. This week the wind was down as well, which is really the Plantation Course’s only form of defense leaving it to be exploited. After round one it was youngster Sahith Theegala who was in front of the pack after a nine-under-par 64, including a stretch where he birdied six straight on the back nine. Theegala wasn’t the only one to have a streak like this throughout the week, with the back nine averaging almost three strokes under par for the week. 

The weekend was set to be a shootout with the Tour’s best, and Kirk was right in the mix after opening with rounds of 67 and 65. Scheffler was the leader after two rounds, but a third-round 71 dropped him down the leaderboard. The low round of the day on Saturday belonged to Harris English. The American surged up the leaderboard after making seven birdies and two eagles on his way to a round of 64. Xander Schauffle also had a good day, shooting 65 and playing himself into the final group on Sunday with Kirk and 21-year-old Akshay Bhatia. 

On Sunday it was all Kirk in the final trio. Bhatia opened with a costly double bogey that he was unable to recover from. Meanwhile, Schauffele’s putter betrayed him, and he was soon out of contention. Making a charge from a few shots behind was Theegala, who shot a bogey-free 63 with five birdies on each side. Theegala even caught Kirk and, at one point, there was a three-way tie for the lead at 28-under-par between those two and Jordan Spieth who was also having a good Sunday. Spieth and Theegala both finished before Kirk – Spieth posting -27 and Theegala -28. 

After hitting a laser approach shot to 2.5 feet on the 17th hole from 209 yards, Kirk kicked in his birdie to get to 29-under with just one to play. The 18th hole was playing as the second easiest all week, with players easily being able to reach the par-5 in two. Kirk knew he only needed par so he played it safe and layed up about 50 yards short of the green in two. After pitching up to the green and two-putting, Kirk became the first player to punch his ticket back to Maui next season. This marks Kirk’s sixth Tour win, and is by far his biggest. Kirk earned himself 700 FedEx Cup points and a whopping 3.6 million dollars.

Winner’s Bag - Chris Kirk

Callaway staffer Chris Kirk claimed his sixth title on Tour on Sunday in Maui, defeating a star-studded field in a shootout. Kirk’s bag is fairly mixed throughout, and he does have one new piece of equipment in the bag. Off the tee, Kirk games the Callaway Paradym Triple Diamond Driver (9 degrees), this is the only Callaway metal in his bag. Kirk has two TaylorMade fairway woods including a Stealth 2 Plus 3-wood (15 degrees), and a Stealth 2 5-wood (18 degrees). Kirk plays a combo set of irons that includes a Apex Pro 4-iron, and Apex CB’s for the rest (5-9 iron). Where Kirk’s bag gets really unique is his wedge setup. Kirk has four total wedges in the bag, including three different models. He starts with a pair of Callaway Jaws MD5’s (46 & 50 degrees), followed by a Vokey Design SM9 sand wedge (56 degrees), and capped off by a Callaway Jaws Raw lob wedge (60 degrees). New in the bag this year and new to the Odyssey line of putters is the new Odyssey Ai One Milled Six T CH. The Ai One line just hit the shelves in November so mark its first win as a big one.