• Read Andy Swales' course and current form stats piece here

• Read Read Dave Tindall's each-way column here

• Read my Sentry preview here

The Sentry, formerly the Sentry Tournament of Champions, used to be a very poor event for longshots but it used to have a small field comprised only of the previous year's PGA Tour winners.

Very few debutants fare well at the Plantation Course so the title tended to go to someone well fancied with plenty of course experience but things may well be changing.

The structure of the tournament was altered after the pandemic and last year it was expanded further to include all the 2023 PGA Tour tournament winners (including the Fall Series winners), plus any players that finished inside the top 50 of the final 2023 FedEx Cup standings.

That had a sizable effect with several longshots contending and the winner of the event, Chris Kirk, was generally a 230.0229/1 chance before the off.

Whether last year was a one off or not remains to be seen but it was an encouraging outcome for those of us that like to play the longshots. I've picked out two.

Nico Echavarria @ 130.0129/1

Few golfers finished 2024 better than Columbia's Nico Echavaria and it wouldn't be a huge surprise if he started 2025 off well too.

The 30-year-old was an impressive winner of the ZOZO Championship at the end of October, he led the World Wide Technology Championship with a round to go next time out (finished sixth), and after a slightly disappointing 29^th in Bermuda, he was a fast finishing runner-up to Maverick McNealy at the RSM Classic in his final start.

The form at the World Wide Technology Championship is interesting given the Tiger Woods-designed El Cardonal golf course in Mexico has huge greens like the ones encountered this week at the Plantation Course and given it's produced low scoring birdie fests in each of the last two years.

Echavaria also shot two rounds of 65 around Waialae Country Club when woefully out of form to climb from tied 59^th to 12^th when debuting in the Sony Open in 2023 and that's the event that correlates better than any other with this one.

The Colombian finished only 25^th here on debut in 2024 but he was again out of form at the time and that was his highest finish on the PGA Tour since he'd won the Puerto Rico Open in March 2023. And he would have fared better if he'd broken 70 on day one.

All things considered, the two-time PGA Tour winner looks a lively outsider and he's well worth playing at a triple figure price given how well he was playing before the break.

Place order to lay 8 Us @ 10.09/1 and 12 Us @ 2.01/1

Patton Kizzire @ 300.0299/1

As already mentioned, the Sony Open correlates brilliantly with The Sentry so I'm more than happy to play the recent Procore Championship winner, Patton Kizzire, at a huge price given the second of his three PGA Tour titles was the 2018 Sony.

Kizzire is playing here for the third time, and he's already fared quite nicely, finishing 15^th back in 2018 and eighth a year later.

He arrives in Hawaii in poor form, with form figures reading 11-43-MC-MC-66 since his facile five-stroke victory in California back in September but he's an in-and-out performer and he won the Procore following two weekends off.

There was only a couple of months between his first two PGA Tour titles so it's certainly conceivable that he could bounce back into form here and win his fourth title, soon after his third, and he too looks a generous price given his credentials.

Place order to lay 8 Us @ 10.09/1 and 12 Us @ 2.01/1

*You can follow me on Twitter @SteveThePunter

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