The future of the PGA Tour's Hawaiian Swing may depend on Mark Rolfing

(Editor’s Note: The PGA Tour season debuts this week at the Sony Open in Hawaii, in what may be the final playing of an event dating to 1965. With one or both legs of the Hawaii Swing in danger of going away, we examine the future of the Tour in the Aloha State. This is the fourth and final part of the series.Part I. Part II. Part III.)

As the longest-tenured golf analyst on TV, Mark Rolfing’s midwestern twang has become synonymous with the PGA Tour’s Hawaiian Swing for NBC and Golf Channel. But he’s also a businessman, who started in the cart barn at Kapalua Resort on Maui in 1976, co-developed its iconic Plantation Course and has been promoting golf on the island for 50 years.  

Due to the cancellation of The Sentry last week, Rolfing was locked in conference rooms and on Zoom calls trying to rescue The Sentry, the Tour’s typical kickoff event, for 2027 and beyond instead of dispensing his annual explanation of the difference between the trade winds and the Kona winds to snow-bound golf fans huddled around their TV. As the Sony Open in Hawaii sets to fill its shoes as this season’s Opening Day event beginning this Thursday, the PGA Tour is on the verge of saying aloha – not hello but rather goodbye – to the Hawaii Swing as we know it. That distinct possibility isn’t sitting well with Rolfing, affectionately called “Mr. Hawaii Golf,” who has saved pro golf in his adopted home state before and faces perhaps his biggest challenge yet — to do it again.

The Tour has been visiting the south shore of Oahu and Waialae Country Club, not far from Diamond Head Crater and the waves of Waikiki Beach, since 1965 and Sony, whose deal expires this year, is one of the longest-running title sponsors dating to 1999. Meanwhile, in Maui, The Sentry, which had been the season starter for the past 27 years at Kapalua was canceled due to a water crisis that led to uncertainty that the course could be in Tour-caliber condition – turns out it was – and its future is as clear as mud. 

There is one school of thought that the Tour is using the draught narrative as an escape hatch out of one of its biggest financial losers in this new era of being a for-profit company with private equity investors expecting an 11 percent annual return. And the Sony Open’s bottom line isn’t much better. And then there is new CEO Brian Rolapp who has introduced the term “scarcity” to golf’s vernacular, suggesting fewer events will breed greater success. The former NFL executive hasn’t been shy in saying that going up against football’s playoffs is bad business. It’s complicated but it’s led to the belief that the Hawaiian Swing – and perhaps the entire January portion of the schedule – could be on the chopping block.

“Some of the West Coast events are going to go away,” Rolfing told Golfweek. “I guess my gut tells me it's not likely Hawaii would have two events out here. It's more likely there would be one, and I think one would be fine if it was one great one, and I think they ought to start the season out here.”

Sentry is signed through 2035 for a signature event. They took this year off but not 2027. Every indication is that Sentry would like to stay in Hawaii. They could’ve shifted their deal to Trump Doral, which ended up with Cadillac as its title, had it wanted to set up shop in Florida and align with President Trump. The best scenario for the PGA Tour in Hawaii may be if Sony walks away and Sentry agrees to pony up for the date at Torrey Pines, which needs a new sponsor as Farmers Insurance is signing off later this month. It is wedged between the NFL’s Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl, A.K.A Pro Bowl Week, in a prime date that could draw better ratings. 

Assuming Maui’s water issue isn’t resolved, the Sentry could be played at Waialae on Oahu in 2027 and perhaps return to Maui in 2028 if the water issue is settled. Perhaps it rotates between the two islands and venues the way the first FedEx Cup playoff event, when it was known as The Northern Trust, alternated years in New York and Boston. Rolfing said it could be The Sentry presented by Sony.

“We’re looking at a lot of options,” he said.

Nobody is more disappointed than me that @TheSentry won’t be played this week. @GolfatKapalua Plantation Course is in magnificent condition now. Unfortunately, circumstances were overwhelming when decisions loomed months ago. I appreciate all your kind words, and hope there is a…

— Mark Rolfing (@MarkRolfingGC) January 6, 2026

Rolfing has beaten cancer, stepped in to save pro golf on Maui once before and is committed to doing so once again. He spent last week strategizing on Tuesday with Sentry officials, who traveled to Maui and stayed at the Westin Hotel as they typically do, and arranging a Thursday call with Mark Steinberg, agent for Tiger Woods and one of the game’s powerbrokers, to discuss the situation with a group that included Hawaii’s governor and Maui’s mayor. 

“I'm trying to figure out who's going to get serious about this. Is Brian Rollap going to get serious about this situation? No, he can't possibly afford to. He's the head of a for-profit entity now, but (the person) who can help get it organized for him is me,” Rolfing said. “And I think I can.”

It’s first worth revisiting why Rolfing, Kapalua and the Sony Open face such an uphill battle. As his first official act as Tour CEO, Rolapp created a nine-member Future Competition Committee, dubbed the FCC and chaired by Tiger Woods, that will seek significant change across the entire competitive landscape, as well as how it’s presented to the viewing public. Veteran pro Harris English let it slip in November that the FCC wants to avoid the behemoth that is the NFL and potentially begin play after the Super Bowl in early February. Rolfing has read the tea leaves and concedes that playing in January is unlikely to happen but says that isn’t such a bad thing.  

“I think the NFL playoffs are affecting us more than they did even a few years ago,” said Rolfing. Last year’s TV rating on Golf Channel dipped nearly 35 percent, drawing a viewership of 461,000, which ranked third-lowest on the year, and just ahead of the Sony Open and The American Express, which also are strictly on Golf Channel and go head-to-head with football.

Rolfing also sees TGL, the indoor screen golf league, which began its second season recently, having the potential to restrict stars from playing. Hawaii is a long way from the SoFi Arena in Florida, which is where matches are held on Monday and Tuesday nights and where the majority of the current participants in the startup league live. Furthermore, Rolfing noted that the DP World Tour’s Middle East Swing, which includes this week's Dubai Invitational and next week's Hero Dubai Desert Classic, is ponying up lucrative appearance fees to players and attracting the likes of Rory McIlroy, who has played at Plantation Course just once in 2019, and other prominent DP World Tour stars such as Tommy Fleetwood, who have made a habit of starting their season there.

“When we started the Tournament of Champions here in '99, the (Middle East Swing) had no impact on us of any kind,” Rolfing said.

The PGA Tour has been playing in Hawaii since 1965, but the finances and unique challenges of staging events in Hawaii is becoming a problem that can’t be ignored. Rolfing noted it wasn’t that long ago that Hawaii had 14 televised events among PGA Tour, PGA Tour Champions and LPGA Tour events and Silly Season stuff such as the Grand Slam of Golf and Senior Skins Game. In fact, Rolfing had the unenvious task in 1998 of telling the executive team at Ford Motor Co., longtime sponsor of Kapalua’s unofficial fall event, that it was being promoted to the main schedule as host of the winners-only Tournament of Champions and its services were no longer needed with Mercedes stepping in to become the title sponsor and Sony assuming title sponsorship of the full-field event at Waialae. Hawaii’s number of pro events has dwindled to four and it is in danger of another haircut.

The state’s investment to the PGA Tour, through the Hawaii Tourism Authority, totaled $1.9 million for 2025 — $600,000 for The Sentry, $650,000 for the Sony Open and $235,260 for the Mitsubishi Electric Championship on the Champions Tour, which is signed through 2031, with the difference going to marketing and sponsorship fees. [It's unclear if the LPGA Tour's Lotte Championship receives support.] Rolfing said that the HTA's backing has been flat for nearly 30 years.

“That number is not going to work anymore,” Rolfing said. “If you look at the Tour and its newer events at places like Utah and Asheville (N.C.) and even Bermuda, those are in the $5 million dollar range.”

There’s only one problem – Hawaii is financially a mess after Maui suffered one of the deadliest U.S. wildfires in at least 100 years in 2023.  The HTA dumped its board last year ands started over from scratch and the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau no longer is run by a golfer. "If our tourism entities were in perfect shape, it would still be a challenge to go to the next level," said an authority on Hawaii tourism. "But now that they are in the situation they are in, it's nearly impossible to try to pull anything together from a funding standpoint." It's a Catch-22 where the state needs revenue from tourism to rebuild – officials estimate the loss of The Sentry this year to be $50 million in economic impact to the area – but don't have the budget for it. Nor do they want to lose another of its precious few international sporting events that serve as informercials for this slice of paradise. [A decade ago the NFL Pro Bowl departed Honolulu and never returned.] 

“Do I think the state will step up? If they could, they certainly would,” Rolfing said. “The governor and everybody are just all over me, as you can imagine, to solve all these problems, which I'm trying.”

Then there is the deal with Sentry, an insurance company based in Wisconsin. Rolfing has helped draft four contracts for Sentry with the Tour. In the latest 10-year deal, which stretches through 2035, Sentry agreed to underwrite a purse bump from just under $9 million to $15 million for a signature event. Largely due to the existential threat of LIV, the Tour later decided that it needed to have purse parity with the signature events and raised The Sentry purse to $20 million. But Sentry is only footing the bill for $15 million, making the Tour responsible for the difference. It didn’t take Rolapp and the Tour’s private equity investors at Strategic Sports Group long to realize they are stuck with a bad business deal.

“It's the only Tour event that I know of that’s in the hole before the tournament even starts,” Rolfing said. “We’ve had a number of discussions about that. I’ve suggested we need to go back to the players and lower the purse.” 

That won’t sit well with players who are accustomed to purses rising. But extrapolate eight more years of having to make up a $5 million deficit plus the built-in expense of shipping to a remote island and rising costs since the Lahaina fires of 2023 and it’s easy to see why The Sentry, which is believed to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million in the red per year, if not more, would be an easy target for the FCC to drop off the schedule. 

There are all these reasons to pull up the circus tent and find a new home elsewhere and we haven’t even touched on the water crisis, which was the impetus for the cancellation this year. (Read Part II here.) The trial between billionaire owners isn’t scheduled to begin until March 2027. Rolfing knows the deck is stacked against him but he also was told he had stage four salivary gland cancer with a 5 percent chance to live a year and here he is at 76 working as hard as ever.

“Are those financial restrictions capable of being solved? Yes, they can be,” he said. “There's no question that they can be, but they need a lot of work and a lot of that is going to be dependent on the date and where the tournament fits on the schedule.”

Rolfing is resigned to the fact that there won’t be room for two events in January in Hawaii anymore. The Friends of Hawaii, the non-profit charity that puts on the Sony Open in Hawaii and has donated $26 million since 1999, has been a consistent money-loser in recent years. According to the 501 C-3’s Form 990, the tournament reported a loss of $178,000 in 2022, $535,933 in 2023 and $210,079 in its most recent filing. Sony’s current four-year contract expires at the end of its tournament this week and it hasn’t renewed yet. “They've never gone this long,” Rolfing said. “You don't do that.”

One golf insider said the two parties were in a “middle inning” discussion regarding an extension and then called a halt. The Tour has been quiet ever since. “The last thing a Japanese company wants is to ‘lose face,’ so the Tour needs to be extra careful how they handle a title sponsor with a market cap of $154 billion,” a source said.

If Sony renews and there is a Sony Open in Hawaii in 2027, it’s not out of the question that Sentry could return to the mainland and set up camp at Torrey Pines and take the spot of Farmers. But if Rolapp, Tiger and the rest of FCC want the season kickoff in prime time, it can only be played in Hawaii.

“Is Sentry going to pay more, potentially? Absolutely. That's all going depend on the date,” Rolfing said. “If they were to end up, let's say, in the date of San Diego, which is the off week in the NFL playoffs, that weekend would cost a whole lot more money to Sentry. That number would be way higher.”

Representatives from Troon Golf, operator of Kapalua’s Plantation Course, said they wouldn’t be opposed to moving the tournament to the spring or summer, where the course would play firmer and faster and moving away from the holiday season when the beach-front resorts are teeming with vacationers and would be more favorable to local businesses. But being the season-opening event is part of its identity. Rolfing said the tournament would be willing to be flexible and accommodate the Tour, including playing the tournament strictly on weeknights to avoid the NFL, if need be.

“What difference does it make to us if our tournament days are Tuesday through Friday? On a tiny little island like this where we barely have any local revenues anyway. How about that? Tuesday through Friday. First week in February, prime time and then send everybody off and have an extra day before they go to Phoenix if (WM Phoenix Open) remains the Super Bowl week,” he added.

The chance to avoid a head-to-head battle with football certainly would draw higher TV ratings, and if it moved into the Farmers week it would include network coverage on CBS. Still, there is the distinct possibility that this week’s Sony Open is the last time the Tour stops in the Aloha State if the FCC is motivated purely by dollars signs. If that is the case, local organizers are already dreaming up alternative ways to promote tourism through the pro game. It took note of the success of the Skins Game on Amazon Prime and hosting that event, a venue for the Tour's revival of "Wonderful World of Golf" (or some new version of the Grand Slam of Golf) may be a more effective means to spending what little marketing budget remains from the state.

Having developed a full understanding of Sentry’s preferences, Rolfing hopes to engage Tiger and see where golf in Hawaii fits in the new realities of the Tour’s schedule. He’s confident that Tiger, with whom he has partnered on a golf course development deal before, will be frank with him.

“He could say, ‘You're wasting your time.’ Or he could say, ‘We're not playing till the (NFL) Playoffs are over,’ or he could say, ‘Whatever,’” Rolfing said.

Tiger isn’t the only member of the FCC that Rolfing will be courting. Adam Scott is an ambassador for Uniqlo, a Japanese casual wear designer and retailer, which is owned by Tadashi Yanai, the head of the family retail conglomerate and the second-richest man in Japan. His other pet project? Ownership of the two courses at Kapalua. Rolfing would like to believe that Scott would go to bat for Kapalua. Rolfing is working four consecutive weeks in March for Golf Channel, beginning at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando, and he intends to use his time to do some campaigning.

“I'm going to talk to these guys. That's what I do. Kind of see what they think and how they might be able to help,” he said.

The clock is winding down, it’s fourth and long and Mr. Hawaii Golf needs a Hail Mary. 

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: The future of the PGA Tour in Hawaii may depend on 'Mr. Hawaii Golf'