Conners Tops Canuck Contingent At Sentry
- Details
- Category: Inside Golf
- Published: 2025-01-09
By Gord Montgomery, Senior Writer, Inside Golf
KAPALUA, Hawaii — It was a week of ups and downs for the four Canadian golfers involved in the first PGA TOUR event of the season, The Sentry, at the famed Plantation Course on Maui.
For one Corey Conners, the payday was great. For a second player, Taylor Pendrith, it was decent but certainly could have been better. For the final two, Adam Hadwin and Nick Taylor, both from B.C., it was a time of could-have, should-have play.
Conners put together four solid rounds and made a bit of a weekend charge to finish in a tie for fifth place, pocketing a cool US$744,166 for his efforts. Conners hung around all tournament and finished with a decent score of -24, which is more than good enough to win at just about any other PGA event but not here where the winner was 11 shots better.
Pendrith, who at one time was tied for third on the final day, had a few issues on the closing holes to end up in a tie for 13th place, earning US$410,000. Overall, he ended up carding a -22 over the four days. He made history at The Sentry however, when he canned his second shot on the par-5 5th hole for the first-ever albatross in the 27-year history of the tournament.
Hadwin, who had a strong first day at The Sentry, couldn’t continue with that and as a result, finished solo 29th. With that placing, he still took home a pretty good-sized cheque of US$148,000. Interestingly enough, after that first day where he was as high as second before ending up seventh, he told Inside Golf in an interview, “The week is still young!” His final score was -18.
As for Taylor, he never really got his feet on the ground until the final two rounds. He was even par through the first 36 holes which in this tournament, where the winds were light and scoring was low, isn’t a number where one finds himself in contention. In his final two rounds though, Taylor posted decent scores to end up at-11 which earned him a T-48 in the 58-man field (this tourney was for winners and the top 50 in the FedEx standings from 2024) and a cheque for US$57,000.
The winner of the event, Hideka Matsuyama, earned a cool US$3.7 million for the victory with a startling final score of -35.