PGA Tour working on downsized schedule for 2027, leaving Hawaiʻi’s The Sentry, Sony Open in limbo

For the past 27 years in early January, veteran broadcast golf analyst Mark Rolfing would stand at the first tee of Maui’s Kapalua Plantation Course and provide insight for TV viewers about the favorites, conditions and results of the prestigious PGA Tour season opener, The Sentry.

But this year is different. Instead of the scenic view behind Rolfing featuring bleachers and a gallery full of golf fans, the camera panned out to the Pacific Ocean. No bleachers. No fans. No tournament of champions.

Instead of talking about the competition, Rolfing was talking about the cancellation of The Sentry and what the State of Hawaiʻi and others are doing to try to bring the tournament back to Maui in 2027 and beyond.

“The future is a little bit murky right now,” Rolfing said to The Golf Channel television audience on Friday.

In September, The Sentry was called off on Maui due to brown, unplayable conditions caused by the island’s long drought and water restrictions. In October, The Sentry was outright canceled for the 2026 season due to logistical challenges trying to find another venue, including shipping deadlines, tournament infrastructure and vendor support.

But The Sentry may have bigger problems returning to Maui than brown grass.

New PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp wants a downsized schedule beginning in 2027. And Rolfing said there has been discussion about next year’s PGA Tour season starting around the Super Bowl on Feb. 14 to avoid competing for the viewers with the NFL playoffs. The Sentry has always been played in January.

”We’ve heard about less (tournaments),” Rolfing told The Golf Channel audience on Friday. “We’ve heard about a contraction of the PGA Tour schedule. I feel pretty comfortable that January is not going to be the future of golf here on Maui, in particular.”

But Rolfing said he is “very, very hopeful that there will be golf played here in Hawaiʻi and I think it’ll be sometime early in the year. I just don’t know when. The Sentry folks are so committed to playing a big, big event and we would love to see it still start the season.”

The 76-year-old Rolfing, a longtime resident of Kapalua, has been busy strategizing with state officials and other stakeholders about plans to bring The Sentry, one of nine signature events on PGA Tour with a $20 million purse, back to Maui — and to also keep the Sony Open in Hawaiʻi at Waialae Country Club on Oʻahu.

Without The Sentry, the 2026 PGA Tour season of 38 events, including three FedEx Cup playoff tournaments, is now set to start next week at the Sony Open on Oʻahu.

But the 2027 schedule is expected to look much different, with Rolapp saying “scarcity,” implying fewer tournaments, was a key characteristic of his plan to bolster the PGA Tour when he was introduced to his new job at an Aug. 20 news conference at the Tour Championship in Atlanta.

While the Saudi-funded LIV Golf league has taken recent champions of The Sentry — Dustin Johnson (2018), Cameron Smith (2022) and Jon Rahm (2023) — the upstart league’s television ratings on Fox last year were abysmal compared to the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour’s television ratings were up 22% last year, according to Sports Business Journal.

The two top officials for Sentry said Tuesday their contract with the PGA Tour runs through 2035, but they don’t know what the 2027 PGA Tour schedule will look like.

Stephanie Smith, chief marketing & brand officer and chief golf partnerships officer for Sentry Insurance, said The Sentry will be played in 2027, but she does not know where.

“We are waiting for the Tour to do its work and make their decisions about what’s best for the Tour going forward,” Smith said. “We know we will continue to be part of the Tour schedule. The question in front of everybody is where? And we’re waiting for that answer, like everyone else.”

When asked if Sentry Insurance wants their event to return to Maui, Smith replied, “Who doesn’t? We love Maui. If it were here, we’d be delighted. But we understand the Tour is making changes. And we will be part of the Tour’s sponsor group.”

Pete McPartland, Sentry Insurance president, CEO and chairman of the board, said no matter what happens his Wisconsin-based company will always have a tight bond with Maui.

Sentry Insurance, the Maui tournament’s title sponsor since 2018, held a news conference on Tuesday to announce a $1 million donation to three Maui charities: $500,000 to Maui United Way, and $250,000 each to the Pu’u Kukui Watershed and Maui Food Bank. 

Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen marveled that the Sentry Insurance Foundation has now donated more than $5.8 million to charities on the island since 2018 when it took over as title sponsor at Kapalua.

“I’m just really grateful to them, they have been great partners, they will continue to be great partners for us in our state, in our county,” Bissen said. “They have been great to us and we just want to continue to support them.”

McPartland said: “What you saw today is an outpouring of our love for the Island of Maui. And we would love for the tournament, when it comes back, to come back here. But there are issues that are more complicated than just a simple question what we would want.”

Max Novena, the PGA Tour’s executive director of The Sentry, said in an email to Hawai’i Journalism Initiative on Friday: “We extend a heartfelt mahalo to Sentry Insurance, whose remarkable $1 million donation once again demonstrates their unwavering commitment to the people of Maui.”

Otherwise, all PGA Tour officials who were asked about the future of The Sentry said the schedule is still up in the air and is in the hands of the Future Competition Committee chaired by Tiger Woods.

The nine-person committee also includes five other PGA Tour players, Joe Gorder, Chairman, PGA Tour Policy & PGA Tour Enterprises Boards and former Executive Chairman & CEO, Valero Energy; John Henry, Principal, Fenway Sports Group and Manager, Strategic Sports Group, PGA Tour Enterprises Board Member; and Theo Epstein, Senior Advisor, Fenway Sports Group, former General Manager, Boston Red Sox and President of Baseball Operations, Chicago Cubs.

“We’re trying to figure out what is the best schedule possible so we can create the best fields and have the most viewership and also the most fan involvement and what does that look like?” Woods said at a news conference at the Hero World Challenge in December.

“There’s this thing with a shield that’s out there (the NFL) that’s influential. And so, yeah, we’re looking at different timetables when we start and finish.”

Woods added the goal is to “create a product that players want to be involved in” and that will be a better product for the fans and all the partners at all the PGA Tour events.

Ray Stosik, tournament director of the Sony Open in Hawaiʻi for 27 years, said he also is waiting for the PGA Tour to make scheduling decisions.

“People want to know about the future and at this time the PGA Tour has not announced its 2027 schedule,” Stosik said. “And I’ve been hearing that they may not release the ’27 schedule until late March or early April, so I don’t think that there’ll be any answers coming shortly, but I have no idea.”

The Sony Open in Hawai’i has had a title sponsorship with the Sony Company for 27 years and has been part of the PGA Tour schedule for more than 60 years. But its current four-year contract with Sony ends at the finish of next week’s tournament.

That event has raised more than $26 million in charitable contributions during Sony’s sponsorship, Stosik said.

“I think the PGA Tour schedule probably got a little bit too big,” Rolfing said. “There are a few too many tournaments” with more and more players are getting hurt toward the end of the year.

“Guys need an off-season,” he said.

Rolfing added that cuts to the PGA Tour schedule will not come easily. 

“There are going to be some tournaments that I think are going to be hurt because of this — a few that have had their spot early in the schedule forever and ever,” Rolfing said. “We can’t forget about the smaller tournaments, just like the one next week in Honolulu. The Sony, I mean that one’s been around since 1965, my heavens.”

Bissen and Hawai’i Gov. Josh Green have both been involved in the discussions to try to bring The Sentry back to Maui and keep the Sony event at Waialae.

“I think what’s important for people to know is that the PGA (Tour) is re-evaluating its signature events, the annual lineup,” Bissen said Tuesday. “They have a lot of choices, a lot of places that they can run tournaments. But no place is better than Hawai’i and in Hawai’i no place is better than Kapalua, Maui. We’re going to do our part.”

James Tokioka, the director of the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism, said the four days of exposure on NBC and The Golf Channel for Maui and the state on back-to-back weeks in early January have been a “huge” benefit for the islands’ economy.

The Maui Chamber of Commerce has said The Sentry has an estimated $50 million economic impact to Maui.

“When you watch The Sentry golf tournament and you see the backdrop of the Bay at Kapalua and you see the whales jumping and you’re sitting in the North, or you’re sitting in the Midwest, or you’re sitting in the East Coast and it’s freezing cold and you haven’t been to Hawai’i in a while, you tend to say to yourself, ‘You know what, it’s time for us to go to Hawai’i,’ ” Tokioka said. “You cannot measure that in dollars, but that’s what The Sentry and the Sony have done for us.”

The state’s investment to the PGA Tour, through the Hawai’i Tourism Authority, was $1.9 million for 2025 — $600,000 for The Sentry, $650,000 for the Sony Open in Hawai’i and $235,260 for the Mitsubishi Electric Championship on the Champions Tour for players on over 50 years old set to be played at Hualālai Golf Course on the Big Island on Jan. 22-24.

For this year without The Sentry event, the Sony Open received $655,636 and the Mitsubishi Electric Championship received $273,182 out of a $1.4 million state allocation. The rest of the money for each year was spent on overall marketing and sponsorship fees.

Tokioka added there is an allocation of $2 million for the three professional golf tournaments in the Governor’s 2027 proposed budget, although the State Legislature has input on which sporting events receive funding.

Woods said the new PGA Tour plan that is in the works could be lucrative for all involved.

“This is fan based,” he said. “We’re trying to give the fans the best product we possibly can, and if we’re able to give the fans the best product we can, I think we can make the players who have equity in the Tour, we can give them more of that.

“So the financial windfall could be fantastic for everyone who’s involved.”