Mercedes, Sony Open lead off PGA season
By Ann Miller
Advertiser Staff Writer
Hawai'i is home to the PGA Tour's first two events of 2003 — this week's Mercedes Championships and next week's Sony Open in Hawai'i. There, the similarities end.
Golfers could search the world and not find two courses as drastically different as Kapalua Plantation and Waialae Country Club. Aside from their place in paradise all they share, in the words of Kapalua Director of Golf Marty Keiter, is that "they both have 18 holes."
"I can't think of two more extreme golf courses," adds defending Sony Open champion Jerry Kelly, one of the 36 who will take on Kapalua this week. "It's kinda funny."
The Plantation Course is spacious and bodacious, with 80-yard fairways, 9,500 square-foot greens and a mountainside location often in the path of troublesome tradewinds.
Waialae is stately and serene, flat as a pond and perfect for walking. It was designed in the 1920s, when golfers "shaped" shots and never had to deal with subdivisions in the middle of their fairways.
The course was established as an amenity for Royal Hawaiian Hotel guests. The beach off the eighth hole (tournament No. 17) was used in "From Here to Eternity."
The greens are half the size of the Plantation and the location some three miles from the heart of Waikiki holds 27 acres of fairways, compared to 100 at Kapalua. The wind is Waialae's most compelling weapon, but it can't compare with the Plantation's brutal gusts.
Sports Illustrated once referred to the Plantation as "golf played off the edge of the world." It soars 7,263 yards across ridges, slopes and jungle ravines and closes with a 663-yard par-5 that takes a bungee-like 170-foot drop.
The tour's longest hole stares straight into the Pailolo Channel between Maui and Moloka'i, winter home to humpback whales.
"It is a big, big golf course," Kelly says. "You hit shots you will never hit anywhere else."
And walk like you have never walked on a golf course before. It is one of the few tournaments where players are shuttled between select holes because of the distance and difficulty of walking.
Spectators don't get that privilege. If you walk the entire sprawling Plantation Course no one can ever question your passion for the game again.
"It is a huge piece of property," Keiter says. "The fairways are big, the greens are big and very difficult. ... But as tough as it is for us, the winning scores have been 18 or 19 under. These guys are going to shoot well."
Sergio Garcia won at 18-under 274 last year, closing with a 64 and beating David Toms on the first playoff hole. Kelly won the Sony Open at 14-under 266 and began planning a three-week Hawaiian vacation for 2003 — one week for family and two for Mercedes and Sony.
He calls the renovations a few years ago at 7,060-yard Waialae "awesome," freeing golfers to "find a target" and visualize shots. John Ramelb, Waialae's head pro, characterizes it as "more of a shot-making course," where good shots are always rewarded and birdies and eagles never get boring.
Good thing. Five years ago, John Huston set a tour record at Waialae, playing it in 28 under.
The transition from Plantation to Waialae will never be boring. Yet the pros — 30 at Kapalua are expected at Sony — make the switch without blinking.
"That's their job," Keiter says. "For 40 weeks a year they go to different golf courses."
