Sentry Enjoying Big Returns With Elevated Status, $15 Million Prize Purse At Golf’s Tournament Of Champions In Maui

For Sentry, the Hawaiian saying “Maui No Ka Oi” – Maui is the best – truly has a special meaning.

When in talks to again extend its sponsorship with the PGA Tour event about six months ago, the Stevens Point, Wisconsin-based insurance company hadn’t sent any guests or clients to the sunny shores (and slopes) of the Kapalua Resort in West Maui during the previous two years due to the pandemic. And it didn’t know that the Sentry Tournament of Champions would be boosted to one of the top 10 events on the PGA TOUR outside of the majors – with elevated prize purses aimed at getting the world’s top golfers to compete against each other with greater frequency.

“It’s great to be back,” Pete McPartland, Sentry’s Chairman of the Board, President and CEO, said from the company’s box alongside the first tee on Day 1 of the 2023 kickoff event. “For all practical purposes, we had a two-year absence. The energy from our guest group, even though they tend to be new from year to year, there’s a different energy to the whole experience.”

The crowds at Kapalua’s celebrated Plantation Course are certainly bigger than the past couple of years and there’s unquestionably a more sizeable media contingent at the tournament, where an elite field of 39 players is competing for $15 million, up from $8.2 million in 2022. All tournament winners from the previous year are eligible for the Sentry Tournament of Champions, although this year the field was expanded to also allow non-winners who advanced to last season’s 30-player Tour Championship.

“There’s 17 of the top 20 in the world here. There’s not very many tournaments the last five years other than the majors and The Players (Championship) that can say that,” said Justin Thomas, who is currently 8^th in the Official World Golf Rankings. “It’s great for this event. Very deserving. Everybody that comes here for the first time understands why, because it is a special event.”

With primetime golf in paradise when many parts of the country are beset by winter weather, the tournament has offered Sentry both terrific branding and customer engagement opportunities.

“The last extension, we didn’t fully know as to what role this tournament would play in the new PGA TOUR lineup. We extended because we were confident that the things that made this tournament right were us weren’t going to change,” McPartland said. “Since then, as we’ve come to understand the role the Sentry Tournament of Champions would play on the tour and obviously we feel fantastic about that. And it’s really picked up among our guests and everyone else. You can feel it.

“We’ve gone from an interesting tournament, an attractive tournament for the players, but kind of a peculiar fit – it’s in the holiday season, there’s no cut, and the beginning of the calendar year but in the middle of the golf season – and now it’s an elevated tournament, one of the top in the game of golf.”

The relationship goes both ways, as well.

Sentry has extended its community outreach in Maui well beyond tournament week, creating a scholarship program for graduates of Maui Public Schools and providing support to various relief efforts on the island. The company has also spearheaded an initiative that connects similar organizations on Maui and in Stevens Point in the areas of community service, arts, education and beyond – fostering collaboration between mayors, university chancellors, heads of the local United Way, and so on.

This year, there was even what McPartland calls “beer diplomacy” and the introduction of a limited-edition collaboration between local Hawaii and Wisconsin breweries with an IPA called the Hula Badger.

“All we did was get the marble rolling down the chute and now we’ve unleashed something we have no control over, which is friendships having been formed and people collaborating and doing things together,” McPartland said. “It’s abundantly positive. We’re very proud of that aspect.”

Next year, the Sentry Tournament of Champions is in store for another change – becoming the first event of a new season as the PGA Tour moves away from a wraparound schedule.

“I’m sure the PGA TOUR and maybe the Golf Channel will do some things to create a bigger environment around the opening of the golf season that will elevate this even further,” McPartland added. “We feel very fortunate, as the sponsor of this tournament, and be on the precipice of so many good things happening.”