Missed gimmes? Sitting pros? How Sony Open is playing as strange as it gets
Lucas Glover on Thursday on the 17th hole at Waialae Country Club.
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We got an inkling on Monday. An appetizer.
It was Sony Open qualifier day. Only they finished it the next day. Good heavens did the heavens open up in Hawaii. GOLF’s headline summed up the proceedings well:
Insane Monday qualifier weather tops PGA Tour rookie turmoil
Wild.
But yeah, that was Monday. They play the tournament Thursday through Sunday at Waialae Country Club.
Where we’ve already gotten a missed gimme.
And a sitting player.
And more. Let’s review. And keep this in mind: We’re just two days into it. Two remain. So go ahead and also consider this a primer for the weekend, where the weather looks wonderful in Honolulu.
And most of the rest of the country will be sitting in a snowy freezer.
Lucas Glover’s gaffe on a gimme
Late last summer, Lucas Glover was the talk of golf. He won the Wyndham Championship. Then he won a week later, at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. But maybe the real news was his putter. For a long stretch, the 2009 U.S. Open winner had struggled from close range. For a while, the right-hander even considered going at it left-handed. But he found a broomstick, he embraced it and off he went.
Then there was the 17th hole on Thursday.
Where he missed from 16 inches. It was captured by @nathanhymel on Twitter.
Then, on Friday, on the same hole, he missed from 3 feet. This one was spotted by @TheModelManic.
Alejandro Tosti takes a seat
Was Alejandro Tosti exhausted? Or was he tired of something else?
Tosti, who earned his first PGA Tour card last year, was spotted by @sacoomba on Twitter sitting greenside on a hole during the first round. He snapped a pic. He tweeted it, which you can see below. He also wrote this:
“Our man Tosti, waiting for his playing partners to play their approach shots.”
Notably, Tosti was forced to withdraw last August from the Korn Ferry Tour’s Boise Open due to what officials termed only as a “disciplinary matter.”
Brian Harman takes his time
Maybe Brian Harman had watched Glover. @GolfBetCaddie captured this of last year’s Open Championship winner, on the par-5 18th on Thursday:
Harman, you may remember, drew attention during his Open win for his pre-shot waggle.
Charley Hoffman tries a shortcut
On Thursday and Friday, most every player in the 144-player field played the dogleg-left, par-5 18th straight up. Then there was Charley Hoffman.
He hit tee-ball one left, somewhere into the adjacent 10th hole, but the move didn’t work — he took a penalty stroke (the reason why was not immediately known) and he had to hit again. And he tried the play again — and stroke three was OK. This sequence was also spotted by @sacoomba.
A picture of his hole, from the PGA Tour’s online leaderboard, is below.
Notably, internal O.B. had been on the hole during the Sony in 2021, when fans weren’t in attendance due to Covid and fewer structures were in place.
Speaking of internal O.B. …
Internal out of bounds!
This isn’t new, but it’s still rare.
There is internal out of bounds to the left of the par-5 9th hole, where the driving range is, and it’s marked by a fence. Below is a picture, shown during Thursday’s broadcast on Golf Channel.
And there is internal O.B. to the right of the 13th hole, denying players a chance to play up the adjacent 12th hole. Below is a picture of that, also shown during Thursday’s broadcast.
He did what?
We’ll let the video do the talking on this one. It was spotted by @anezbitt on Thursday.
Carl Yuan is contending. You’ve seen the highlights
One more.
There’s one of the contenders.
Carl Yuan is near the top of the leaderboard. And why is that written here? For one, Yuan bumped into last season’s top 125 — and Tour card status — only after Jon Rahm bolted for LIV Golf.
And there are his highlights, which you can watch below.
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