by What a delightful final pairing to kick off the professional golf season in 2025! Hideki Matsuyama and Collin Morikawa, two of the best iron players in the sport, pulled away from the rest of the field and tore up a windless Plantation Course at Kapalua. Matsuyama ultimately clipped Morikawa to win The Sentry by three shots at 35 under, setting the PGA Tour record for 72-hole score in relation to par, a record that we should not put any stock in. Par is just a number on a card.
Hideki leaned on his world-class ballstriking, finishing second in Strokes Gained: Approach at +9.2 to win the 11th PGA Tour event of his career and capture his third win in the last 12 months. He also gained over five strokes on the greens with a new experimental putter. Barring setbacks to his physical health, Matsuyama should be in a strong position to make a run at another major championship in 2025.
Morikawa started off the year on the right foot after a quietly consistent 2024 season. One of the most accurate drivers in the world and an elite iron talent, Collin has been one of the best performers in major championships of the 2020s. Though he didn’t put up too much of a fight against Matsuyama on Sunday, Morikawa’s solid runner-up performance bodes well for his chances of being considered a top-five player in the world in 2025.
In other final-pairing news, Hideki holed out for eagle on the par-4 third hole before the beginning of the broadcast window, which didn’t start until Matsuyama and Morikawa were on the fifth green. Apparently the shot was shown during Golf Central Pregame, but pregame coverage on a different network than the telecast (NBC) does not cut it.
How can you expect to engage your fans when you don’t show every shot live from two of the best golfers on your Tour in the final round of a Signature Event? This kind of sports coverage was inexcusable ten years ago, let alone in 2025. It’s an embarrassing way to manage a product, and it’s an insulting way to treat your fans. Let’s hope the Creator Council can rectify this.
Meritocracy at Its Finest
As the PGA Tour has unveiled changes to the future of its model, there’s been a fair amount of backlash that the Tour is becoming more closed off and less accessible than ever, criticism that is largely unfounded. The counterpoint to the backlash is Max Greyserman, who finished ninth on the Korn Ferry Tour points list in 2023 to lock up a PGA Tour card for last season. The 29-year-old then took a leap with his game in 2024, highlighted by two runner-up finishes last summer that propelled him into the top 50 of the FedEx Cup standings, earning him entry into all of the Signature Events in 2025, including this weekend’s Sentry at Kapalua.
Greyserman opened the 2025 season with a decent showing at The Sentry, finishing T-24. Effectively within a 12-month span, Greyserman has gone from battling on the Korn Ferry Tour to having a clear path to compete in all of the most prestigious tournaments in professional golf. Greyserman is a shining example that the path to the top level of the PGA Tour is meritocratic and achievable; you just have to be really, really good at golf. And that’s how it should be.
New Year, Same Struggles
During Friday’s round of The Sentry, Justin Thomas stood over a short birdie putt on the sixth hole that the PGA Tour Live commentator described as a “gimme.” His attempt didn’t scare the hole, a continuation of the putting struggles Justin faced throughout 2024. He also found four penalty areas off the tee on a very wide setup with soft, benign conditions and finished the tournament T-26.
Until JT solves either the driver accuracy issues or the putting woes, he cannot be thought of as a significant threat to win in strong fields.
This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
