Davis and Baddeley fly Australian flag in Honolulu
Aaron Baddeley – runner-up in this event on debut 23 years ago
Following the rather inauspicious debut of TGL in the past few days, the PGA Tour will be keen to get their full-field events underway for 2025 when the Sony Open at the Waialae Country Club in Honolulu gets underway on Thursday.
The event has traditionally been the second of the year on the PGA Tour schedule following the limited field Sentry Tournament and as such offers many debutantes the opportunity of exposure to regular life on the PGA Tour for the first time.
Perhaps surprisingly only two Australians, Cam Davis and Aaron Baddeley are in this week’s field, Davis looking to overcome the disappointment of a wrong ball incident late in the Sentry last week which cost him perhaps a top-five finish.
The event has often seen numerous Australasians in the field but Davis and Baddeley, a runner-up in the event in one of his very first appearances as a PGA Tour member in 2002, will be the only to fly the Australian flag.
Davis has been a regular in the event since gaining his playing rights on the PGA Tour, this week’s appearance his 7th although there has been only one top 20 finish that being in 2020 when 9th.
Baddeley will play the Sony Open for the 11th occasion but other than the runner-up finish in 2002 and a 7th place finish in 2023 there has not been a lot to get excited about.
There will be a great deal of sadness this week as the man who would have been the defending champion, Grayson Murray, took his own life in May of 2024 after ongoing battles with depression.
Following his emphatic win in Hawaii last week, Hideki Matsuyama looks to repeat his 2022 victory at the Waialae Country Club and looks the strong favourite to do so in what is a relatively weak field by PGA Tour standards.
