Since 1965, Hawaii has hosted the Sony Open every year. Well, that stops in 2027. The tour will not start its season on the islands for the first time in more than 50 years. And the people who built businesses around that tradition are now asking why no one told them.

At Travel Weekly’s Hawaii Leadership Forum in Honolulu, Jimmy Tokioka, a senior official at Hawaii’s Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, addressed more than 300 travel professionals, 70% of them locally based.

“We just found out about this, the governor and I, just like everybody else found out about this, and it got leaked yesterday by a sports writer… he must have heard something from somebody in the PGA Tour, that it was the decision that was made,” he said.

He also noted that Hawaii’s sports tourism representative had been in talks with the tour, but the communication was deliberately vague. That lack of transparency hurts more when you consider what the Hawaii Swing brought in.

Tokioka said it plainly: “We all know with the PGA Tour, when people travel for that, they are high-end spenders, and that’s the type of traveler we want to get to Hawaii.”

Well, these are not average tourists. PGA Tour visitors book premium hotels and spend considerably more per trip. Losing that specific segment matters for a state that has been trying to attract quality tourism, not just volume. However, the ground had already been shifting before this announcement.

Following a dispute with the company managing a century-old water delivery system, the Sentry at Kapalua was canceled late in 2025 after a drought killed the grass on the Plantation Course. This week, two Kapalua staff members at Troon Golf received the news that the tour would not return.

Oahu’s Sony Open was caught, too. The back-to-back Sentry package had drawn top players to Hawaii for two weeks since 1999. That logic failed without the Sentry. In 2026, the Sony Open ended its main tour sponsorship. The PGA Tour is working to move it to the Champions Tour and pair it with the Mitsubishi Electric Championship on the Big Island, making it a 50-and-over event from 2027.

Sentry’s response was gracious but clearly a goodbye. Chief marketing and brand officer Stephanie Smith said the company was proud of its eight-year run at Kapalua.

“We have said from the beginning, we love Maui and Maui is a Sentry community not unlike our hometown of Stevens Point, Wisconsin,” she said. “Our commitment to the island runs deep.” There was no mention of any future PGA Tour involvement.

The restructuring is being led by incoming PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, who is rebuilding the schedule with a later season start and a shift away from no-cut formats. Hawaii’s geographic isolation in the middle of the Pacific, along with the logistical weight that comes with it, no longer fits the new model.

Beyond the decision, Waialae’s history shows what is being lost.

A course that rewrote record books and golfing history

In 1983, Isao Aoki produced one of the most dramatic finishes in golf history, holing out a wedge for eagle on the final hole to win. That one shot made the Sony Open a story that went around the world and showed how Waialae always gave people moments that went far beyond Hawaii’s shores.

In 2017, Justin Thomas made the tournament more famous by scoring a historic 59 and a total of 253, which was 27 under par. It showed how the course could be tough for top players while still letting them shine, which is why the event stayed an important early-season test.

The event has also opened doors for new talent. Tadd Fujikawa made the cut at 16 with fearless play, while Michelle Wie’s 68 as a 14-year-old almost got her through. These performances linked local identity to global competition in a way that mattered.

Waialae’s legacy was also built on consistency. John Huston’s 28-under win set a scoring record, Jimmy Walker’s back-to-back titles showed that he was consistently great, and Grayson Murray’s playoff win in 2024 kept the trend of close finishes going, which kept the event competitive and interesting.