Monday Morning Maui Sports: Matsuyama breaks PGA Tour scoring record at Kapalua

KAPALUA — Japanese golfer Hideki Matsuyama bettered all those who came before him in The Sentry — and everywhere else in a traditional four-round event — with a PGA Tour-record 35-under-par run to the championship on Sunday at the Plantation Course at Kapalua, a place that produces record scores like nowhere else on Earth.

Sitting tied with Cameron Smith’s winning score of 34-under set here in 2022, Matsuyama stepped to the 18th hole, a mammoth 678-yard downhill challenge, with a comfortable three-stroke lead over eventual runner-up Collin Morikawa. Matsuyama needed a birdie for history and he got it.

Matsuyama smoked his driver 414 yards off the tee, leaving him 244 yards to the hole. He hit his second shot 236 yards to the right fairway in front of the green, leaving him 92 feet from the hole. He chipped his third shot to 8 feet, 1 inch, away and he made the putt to complete a four-round PGA Tour event where no one had ever finished before.

Matsuyama, who now has 11 PGA Tour victories in 265 starts at the age of 32, knew he was close to the record, but wasn’t positive what it was on the 72nd hole. His 11 wins are a PGA Tour record for an Asian player — the previous record of 8 belonged to K.J. Choi. Matsuyama won $3.6 million of the $20 million purse.

“I thought maybe it was like 34, 35 (under), I wasn’t sure, but I kind of thought, ‘you know if I’m thinking like that, it probably won’t go in,’ but it did go in, and so I’m glad it did,” Matsuyama said through interpreter Alan Turner. Matsuyama held interview sessions with English speaking and Japanese speaking media after his victory.

Morikawa, a six-time tour winner, finished runner-up for the 10th time in 122 career starts — he holds six top-seven finishes in as many appearances at The Sentry (tied for 7th in 2020, tied for 7th in 2021, tied for fifth in 2022, second in 2023, tied for 5th in 2024, second in 2025).

Sungjae Im finished third at 29 under after he played his last 51 holes without a bogey. He recorded his third top-5 finish in five starts at the event (tied-5th in 2021, tied-5th in 2024, 3rd in 2025). Jhonattan Vegas was fourth at 25 under.

Matsuyama said it was special to win at Kapalua and to come to Maui for the tournament more than a year after the devastating August 2023 wildfire. The Sentry was also held in January 2024.

“After the fire we didn’t know if we were going to get to play here,” Matsuyama said. “We were able to get to play, and play again this year. And then be able to win, this is a tournament that I’ve always wanted to win, it’s a special place here, so definitely happy to have won here.”

Matsuyama shot 65-62-65-65—257 on the par-73, 7,596-yard layout.

For Morikawa, who has strong family ties to Lahaina where his family owned Morikawa Restaurant several decades ago, it was a tough second-place finish — his 32-under is tied with Matt Jones for the fourth-best score in PGA Tour history, all of the top six coming in The Sentry at Kapalua.

Smith won the 2022 event at 34 under, Jon Rahm was second at 33 under, and Jones was third at 32 under. All three of those players now play for PGA Tour rival LIV Golf. 

Ernie Els won here in 2003 at 31-under par and Jordan Spieth won here in 2016 at 30 under. The only other player to finish at 30 under or better in a four-round PGA Tour event was Dustin Johnson’s 30 under at The Northern Trust in 2020.

Morikawa also finished second here in 2023 when he led Rahm by seven strokes going into the final round, but Rahm won the event by two strokes.

“Just going through the shots I left out there. There was a good handful that I wish I could have back,” Morikawa said. “When you don’t get it done you kind of, that’s where your mind goes to. … I know there is a lot of positives, and it’s going to take me a few hours or a day to get over it. It’s just, how do you clean things up for four rounds. 

“It’s tough to win, and I’ve seen it over this kind of past year, and like I said, ‘I love being in this position, this is a position you want to be in, I want to keep giving myself chances.’ I know they’re going to come … you just know if you keep knocking at the door and we’re going to go on a roll pretty soon, it’s just hopefully sooner rather than later.”

Morikawa had family in the gallery all week long, making the frustration of being so close perhaps more magnified.

“It’s special,” Morikawa said of feeling at home here. “When you have that kind of support behind you it means a lot and it makes these weeks a little bit better. It makes you kind of push a little bit harder. You want to play the best you can, so hopefully we’ll be back next year and just find a way to shoot 36-under. It might not even be enough, 40-under — 40-under is ridiculous.”

HJI’s “Monday Morning Maui Sports” columns appear weekly on Monday mornings with updates on local sports in the Maui Interscholastic League and elsewhere around Maui County. Please send column ideas — anything having to do with sports in Maui County — as well as results and photos to rob@hjinow.org.