If you’re a golf fan, your January usually looks a certain way. You shake off the New Year's Eve hangover, grab a coffee, and turn on the TV to see the blindingly bright green fairways of Maui. It’s a ritual. But this year, things feel weird. Honestly, they feel wrong. For the first time in decades, the PGA Tour didn't kick off its season with the sun-drenched views of the Plantation Course at Kapalua.
The Sentry golf tournament is gone for 2026.
No, it’s not a permanent "goodbye," but the cancellation of this year’s event has sent a massive ripple through the golf world. Usually, this is where the elite of the elite—the tournament winners and the top 50 FedExCup finishers—come to shake off the rust. Instead, the 2026 season officially hit the ground running at the Sony Open in Honolulu this week, leaving a Maui-sized hole in the schedule.
What Actually Happened to The Sentry Golf Tournament?
People have been asking if this was a money issue or a LIV Golf drama thing. It wasn't. The truth is actually much more grounded and, frankly, a bit sad. The 2026 edition was officially scrapped due to a combination of severe, ongoing drought conditions on Maui and the resulting water conservation mandates.
You can’t run a "Signature Event" on a crispy, brown golf course.
The PGA Tour and Sentry Insurance (who, by the way, are locked in as sponsors through 2035) tried to find a workaround. They looked at other courses in Hawaii. They even floated the idea of moving it to the West Coast or Florida. But have you ever tried to move a massive televised sporting event with three months' notice? The logistics—shipping TV equipment, securing vendors, and setting up the literal infrastructure of a tournament—made a move impossible.
The Kapalua Struggle
The Plantation Course is a beast of a track, known for its massive elevation changes and those iconic trade winds. But it requires an enormous amount of water to keep it in "Signature" shape. With Maui facing significant water shortages and legal wrangling over water rights following the devastating 2023 wildfires, the optics of pouring millions of gallons onto a golf course just weren't there.
The Domino Effect: How It Changes the 2026 Season
The loss of the Sentry golf tournament isn't just about missing out on seeing guys hit 400-yard drives down the 18th hole. It fundamentally changed how players qualify for other big events this year.
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Since The Sentry is one of the "Signature Events" (the ones with the $20 million purses), the Tour had to figure out what to do with the guys who earned their way in. If you won a tournament in 2025 but didn't finish in the top 50 of the FedExCup, you suddenly lost your biggest perk. To fix this, the Tour is moving those eligible winners into the RBC Heritage field in April. It’s a decent consolation prize, but it’s definitely not a week in Maui.
- First Signature Event of 2026: Now the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
- Season Opener: Officially shifted to the Sony Open at Waialae.
- The "Winner's Circle" Perk: Essentially deferred to the spring.
It’s kind of wild to think about. For years, winning a PGA Tour event meant you started your next year in a literal paradise with a guaranteed paycheck (since there’s no cut). Now, those 2025 winners are just starting their year in the grind like everyone else.
Looking Back to Look Forward: The Matsuyama Record
To understand why people are so bummed about the 2026 gap, you have to look at what happened last year. Hideki Matsuyama didn't just win; he absolutely demolished the place. He finished at 35-under-par.
Read that again. 35-under.
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He broke the 72-hole scoring record previously held by Cameron Smith. It was one of those weeks where the golf felt like a video game. Matsuyama’s $3.6 million winner's share was the biggest in the tournament's history, part of that massive $20 million total purse that Sentry brought to the table. That’s the level of competition we’re missing this week.
The "Sentry" Identity Beyond the Course
Sentry Insurance has actually done a lot more than just put their name on a leaderboard. Since they took over in 2018, they’ve leaned hard into the "Ohana" concept. They’ve raised over $8 million for Maui charities. After the Lahaina fires, they chipped in another $3 million for recovery.
This is probably why the Tour was so hesitant to move the event to Florida or California. The tournament is deeply tied to the Maui community. Playing it anywhere else would have felt like a cheap imitation.
What Most People Get Wrong
There’s a common misconception that The Sentry is still just the "Tournament of Champions." It’s not. A couple of years ago, they expanded the field to include the Top 50 in the FedExCup standings from the previous season. This turned it from a small, 30-player exhibition into a legitimate, high-stakes showdown. It’s arguably the most important non-Major tournament of the early season—which makes its absence in 2026 even more noticeable.
What’s Next for the 2027 Return?
The good news is that everyone involved—the Tour, Sentry, and the Hawaii government—expects the tournament to be back in its rightful spot in January 2027. The "break" is being used to let the land recover and to resolve the logistical hurdles that the drought created.
If you’re a fan or a bettor, you’ve got to pivot your strategy for this quarter. Keep a close eye on the guys who usually play well at Kapalua—players like Jordan Spieth, Collin Morikawa, and Scottie Scheffler. They’re losing a "comfort" week on a course they love, which might mean they start the season a little slower than usual.
Actionable Insights for the 2026 Season:
- Watch the Pebble Beach Transition: Since Pebble is now the first Signature Event, expect the "A-Listers" to show up there with a lot more intensity than usual.
- Monitor the Course Conditions: If you’re planning a trip to Maui to play the Plantation Course yourself, check the local water reports. The course is often open to the public, but the "pro-level" conditions depend entirely on the recovery of the local watershed.
- Support Maui Directly: Since the tournament’s charitable engine is idling this year, consider looking into the Sentry Mālama Nā Keiki initiative or other local Maui relief funds if you want to support the community that usually hosts us.
The 2026 season is going to feel a bit "off" without that Maui start, but the drama at Waialae and the shift to Pebble Beach will keep things interesting until the whales are jumping behind the 18th green at Kapalua once again in 2027.