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The PGA Tour’s first full event of the calendar year kicks off Thursday in Honolulu, where Patton Kizzire will defend the title he claimed in a marathon playoff.

PGA TOUR

LAST TOURNAMENT: Sentry Tournament of Champions (Xander Schauffele)
THIS WEEK: Sony Open in Hawaii, Jan. 10-13
Waialae CC, Honolulu (Par 70, 7,044 yards)
Purse: $6.5 million (Winner: $1.152M and 500 FedEx Cup points)
Defending champion: Patton Kizzire
FedEx Cup leader: Xander Schauffele
Television: Thursday-Saturday, 7-10:30 p.m. ET (Golf Channel); Sunday, 6-10 p.m. (Golf Channel).
Kizzire won last year’s event in a six-hole playoff against James Hahn. … Australia’s Marc Leishman enters the week with a win, a runner-up, a tie for fourth and a tie for 18th in his last four worldwide starts. … Jordan Spieth makes his 2019 debut. He has not won since the 2017 Open Championship and enters 17th in the world rankings. He has a missed cut and has a tie for 55th in two starts this season. … Justin Thomas won the event with a tournament-record score of 253 in 2017, when he posted an opening-round 59. He has shot 68 or lower in eight consecutive rounds at Waialae. … Jimmy Walker is a two-time winner. … Twenty-three of the 33 players in last week’s field are also entered in the Sony Open. Schauffele is not in the field. … Rory Sabbatini is playing his first event under the Slovakian flag after becoming a naturalized citizen last week. The South African native’s wife is Slovakian. … Bubba Watson is making his first appearance at the Sony Open since 2010. … The field features four players over 50: Vijay Singh, Steve Stricker, Davis Love III and Kenny Perry. … Peter Jung, 16, qualified by winning the Hawaiian qualifier for amateurs and will play in his first PGA Tour event.
NEXT WEEK: Desert Classic, La Quinta, Calif.
–Field Level Media