Mark Rolfing called the PGA Tour in March 2023 with a warning: Maui’s water crisis was about to destroy the Plantation Course. By late June, Tour agronomy told him everything was fine. By August, the course was closed.

The 2026 Sentry at Kapalua is now officially canceled, ending a 27-year run as the PGA Tour’s season opener. But the drought didn’t kill this tradition alone. A $50 million financial hole—one the Tour created and refused to fix—may have sealed its fate long before the grass turned brown.

“There’s no problem. Everything’s fine there. Don’t worry. Everything is fine there,” Rolfing recalled Crawford saying.

Rolfing, the NBC/Golf Channel analyst who has lived on Maui for decades, laid out the timeline on the No Laying Up Podcast. He sounded the alarm early, telling Tour officials that an “impending disaster” loomed over Kapalua’s water infrastructure. The response from Mike Crawford, head of PGA Tour agronomy, arrived in late June.

Rolfing pushed back. He lived on the island. He could see the deterioration firsthand.

“Mike, I live here. I know everything’s not fine here. Where are you guys? I haven’t seen any agronomy people here. We’ve got an impending disaster, and nobody’s here.”

The timeline collapsed fast. “It went from everything’s fine at the end of June to we’re closing the course in a month,” Rolfing said.

The water crisis provided the headline. But beneath it sat a financial reality that fundamentally altered the Tour’s incentive to fight for Kapalua. In 2024, Sentry agreed to a long-term sponsorship deal through 2035, covering a $15 million purse. Then the Tour raised all Signature Event purses to $20 million for parity—and never asked Sentry to cover the difference.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of a title sponsor not covering the purse of a tournament,” Rolfing said on the podcast.

The math cuts deep. Five million dollars annually, over ten years, equals $50 million the Tour would subsidize from its own coffers. Rolfing imagined how Brian Rolapp, who assumed control as PGA Tour CEO in June 2025, might have reacted upon learning of the arrangement.

“Either you guys are fired or you’re crazy.”

But here’s the twist that complicates the drought narrative. Golfweek senior writer Adam Schupak reported that the Plantation Course has already recovered—and is handling up to 150 public rounds per day at $475 each. The course reopened on November 10, 2025, its drought-resistant Celebration bermudagrass and TifEagle greens restored to what observers described as “wall-to-wall perfection.” Designers Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw are currently on-site making adjustments. No staff were laid off during the closure. Schupak’s question lingers: Did the Tour pull the plug prematurely on a solvable problem?

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The environmental failure at Kapalua was real. Maui Land & Pineapple, which manages the century-old Honokohau Ditch System supplying irrigation water to West Maui, faced accusations of allowing critical infrastructure to fall into “demonstrable disrepair.” TY Management, the course’s owner, filed a lawsuit in August 2025. MLP countered that the historic drought—46% of normal rainfall over 12 months—caused the shortage, not neglect.

The legal battle continues. But the broader pattern demands attention.

The Signature Event era has rewritten the PGA Tour’s economics. Purses doubled and tripled almost overnight as the Tour scrambled to retain players against LIV Golf’s billions. Legacy sponsors locked into pre-escalation deals now find themselves covering fractions of inflated purses. The Tour absorbs the rest—or walks away.

Rolfing warned in October that The Sentry faced cancellation, calling the situation “dire” with no viable replacement venue. The tournament has contributed over $9.7 million to Maui nonprofits since 1999 and generates an estimated $50 million annually for the island’s economy. None of that mattered when the numbers stopped working.

The 2026 PGA Tour season opens at the Sony Open in Honolulu on January 12. Sentry’s sponsorship runs through 2035. The Plantation Course reopened in mid-November, its fairways restored to pristine condition.

The precedent now exists. In the Signature Event era, tradition bends to the balance sheet. Kapalua learned that lesson. Other legacy tournaments should be watched.