Team Troon On Tour: Fitzpatrick With T7 and Thomas With T25 Finish At Kapalua

Sentry Tournament of Champions – Kapalua

The eyes of the global golf world were on Kapalua for the 25 playing of the Sentry Tournament of Champions on the Coore-Crenshaw designed Plantation course. The field was strong with 17 of the top 20 players that made up the field of 39 winners (plus those that made it to the Tour Championship, thus finishing Top 30 in FedEx Cup points in 2022). This years event also marked the very first elevated event in PGA TOUR history with a new $15M purse (nearly double from last year). Two Team Troon members were in the field including two time Sentry Tournament of Champions winner, Justin Thomas and first timer (to both the event and Hawaii in general), Matt Fitzpatrick. Matt Fitzpatrick would finish as low Team Troon member following his play in the final group on Sunday. He would finish T7 for -21, six shy of eventual winner and Callaway staffer in Jon Rahm.  Justin Thomas would finish T25 after posting a four round total of -15.

• T7 Matt Fitzpatrick:     66-69-66-70 = 271 / -21
• T25 Justin Thomas:  70-70-67-70 = 277 / -15

Congrats to the entire Kapalua / Troon “Ohana” on a truly amazing event the agronomy team, operational team, retail team and all involved worked tirelessly that week to put on a great event that showed so well on a global stage. The course was great. The TV coverage was great. The buzz/pr created around Kapalua was off the charts. Well done to all involved!

Coming Up Next Week

Sony Open in Hawaii

The PGA TOUR stays in the Aloha State for the Sony Open in Hawaii. This event has been played Waialae Country Club in Honolulu, Hawaii, since the event’s modern-day inception as the Hawaiian Open in November 1965. Two Team Troon players are in the field in Gary Woodland and 2019 Sony Open Champion, Matt Kuchar.

In addition to Team Troon players in the field with have a Troon Associate in the field in Kapalua Plantation’s PGA Head Golf Professional Michael Castillo! Castillo qualified for the Sony when he captured the 2022 Aloha Section Championship in September on Kauai.

The AP and Doug Ferguson picked up on Michael’s story, his recent battle with cancer and his “debut” at age 60, family lineage in Hawaii golf and scribed this story on Tuesday. The story was pushed throughout AP channels including the Honolulu Star Bulletin: https://apnews.com/article/sports-compensation-in-golf-liver-disease-jordan-spieth-815130d597b6944a8996eaa2d94dd42e

On the same day, UNIQLO athlete Adam Scott, played a practice round with Michael at Waialae. Photos of this great day/experience were shared on @Troon social.

Go low this week Matt, Gary, Adam and Michael. Michael your “Troon Ohana” will be pulling for you this week!

Shareable

In advance of the Kapalua Sentry TOC we created an “Aloha Inspired” Matt Fitzpatrick golf bag (that also included a Kapalua Logo and Maui 2023). We executed a bag / Kapalua Gift Card giveaway (tied to Troon Rewards) that created great content on social and drove additional data collection.

Matt Fitzpatrick executed some great social / Instagram stories in prep for his first appearance at Kapalua. One of a number of that (that were pushed to his 166K followers) is below:

In advance of the Sentry Tournament of Champions, Justin Thomas did a collaboration with No Laying Up that included great Kapalua coverage and also included a nice thank you via JT twitter sent to his 600K plus twitter followers.

Have a great week! Go Team Troon! Go Michael!