A very good field including several of the world’s top golfers is gathering this week on the west edge of Maui for the Sentry Tournament of Champions. It’s almost good enough to make people forget about the three names that are missing from the first PGA Tour event of 2019. So let’s start at the top. Dustin Johnson breezed home by eight strokes in this event last year, and he presents himself as somewhat of a flawed favorite this time.

Johnson has continued as no. 1 player in the world per the Hawley Ratings for 32 straight weeks (somewhat in contrast to the Official World Golf Ratings, which have featured Brooks Koepka and Justin Rose alternating in and out of the top spot all fall). Also Johnson ranks second in the field in the extent to which his statistical profile matches what has been successful on the Kapalua Plantation Course the past several years. (Cameron Champ is first.) The down-side on Johnson is that he has played farther below his rating than any other player in this field in the period between the Tour Championship and Dec. 31, his rating having dropped 180 points. Johnson appeared three times, going 1-4 in the Ryder Cup, 30th at the HSBC, and seventh at the World Challenge.

There have been about 20 regular tour and “silly season” events featuring primarily U.S. and European players and with purses in the $1 million and up range since the Tour Championship. Of these, eight were regular PGA Tour events. Obviously these events have varying significance to the players depending on the event and where the player is in his career. One measure of who’s been successful in this part of the year is a comparison of whether the player’s Hawley Rating has gone up or down. Here is a list of six guys who improved their ratings the most during this part of the year:

Cameron Champ — Long-ball-hitting 23-year-old rookie had the biggest ratings boost of anyone in this tournament, winning the Sanderson and posting top-10s in the RSM and Mayakoba; he had nothing outside the top 30 in six events.
Scott Piercy — Was in the top 10 the last three times he appeared — fifth in the CJ Cup, sixth at Mayakoba, and 10th in the Shriners.
Gary Woodland — Has been really good going back to last September, starting with finishes just outside the top 10 in two of the FedEx Cup events. Since then he’s played six times, with five top-10s, including second at the CJ Cup and fifth at the CIMB and Shootout.
Patton Kizzire — Won the Shootout with partner Brian Harman and was in the top 15 at the RSM.
Aaron Wise — The 2018 rookie of the year played only twice during the fall. He was 15th at the Shriners and 10th at Mayakoba.
Marc Leishman — In addition to enjoying summer weather in his native Australia, Leishman lit it up by winning the CIMB, finishing as runner-up in the Australian PGA and (with partner Cameron Smith) also runner-up in the World Cup. He made the top 20 at the CJ Cup.

The field also includes five others from the current Hawley Ratings top 10 – Justin Thomas, Koepka, Paul Casey, Webb Simpson, and Jason Day. Among them, Day had the best fall months with three top-20s in three appearances, including fifth at the CJ Cup. Simpson was 2-1 in the Ryder Cup and had a third in the RSM among two other appearances.

From the second 10 in the ratings, the field includes Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, and Francesco Molinari. Rahm won the World Challenge and was fourth at Dubai, the Euro Tour version of the Tour Championship.

The top statistics correlating with success on the Plantation Course per the Hawley course fit statistics are scrambling and putting. Thomas and McIlroy join Champ and Johnson at the top of the list in that analysis. Day, Koepka, Simpson, and Rahm are not far back.

To get into the field of this event, you had to win a Tour event in 2018. (That’s January thru December, 2018, not equivalent to the 2017-’18 PGA Tour.) The three who qualified but decided against a trip to Hawaii this week would make a pretty good set of headliners for some events themselves — Phil Mickelson, Justin Rose, and Tiger Woods.