Justin Thomas is now the hottest golfer on the PGA Tour. He won last week at the SBS Tournament of Champions. And Thursday, he opened the first round at the Sony Open at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu, Hawaii–one of my favorites venues on Tour when I used to play–with a record-tying 59. Yesterday, he didn’t back off, shooting 64 for a new record 36-hole score of 123 in the entire history of the PGA Tour. Long-hitting Gary Woodland is five shots back in second place starting today’s third round.
Waialae Country Club is located along the Pacific Ocean about five miles north of the famous Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. From there you drive past Diamond Head to get to the golf course. The entire course is pretty flat, being only a mere few feet above the ocean’s water level. The golf course lies between the ocean and a a very visible mountain range a few miles away.
This photo is from the sixteenth fairway at Waialae C. C. as you view the sixteenth green and the Pacific Ocean behind it. Those palm trees behind the green were planted there purposely at those angels to form the letter W referring to the first letter in the word Waialae. A television tower in the right side of the photo is no doubt there temporarily for the filming of the Sony Open.
One year when I played in the Hawaiian Open at Waialae C. C., local tournament officials had some native Hawaiians perform= customary festivities on the first tee box before the first round of tournament play began. There was soothing Hawaiian music, customary chanting, local Hawaiians dancing in colorful hula skirts, and even some shamans calling on spirits to manifest themselves. It was a perfectly sunny, warm, calm, and beautiful morning, just like you’d expect in Hawaii, which is surely the most popular and successful destination resort in the world. But only minutes later the whole sky turned very dark as a hellacious storm descended from those nearby mountains to just about blow all of us into Pacific blue. The wind and rain was so fierce that we had to stop play while it quickly blew out to sea.
After that, I got to wondering what those shamans had chanted when they called on the spirits. Surely those indigenous fellows didn’t wish any ill on us for smacking a little white ball around their ancestral premises. Maybe what they had, there, was “a problem to communicate” with the spirits. At any rate, I later visited the Halemaumau Crater with its live volcano in Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawaii. Hawaiians believe it is the home of the chief goddess Pele of Hawaiian religion and mythology. After all that, I decided Hawaii is both a very beautiful and a mystical place.
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