As the last man in to the field, Talor Gooch will arrive on Maui for the Sentry Tournament of Champions at the Kapalua Plantation Course as a bit of an everyman.

He will arrive as the leader of the 2021-22 FedEx Cup race after his win at the RSM Classic last month for his first PGA Tour victory.

Among the many things that went through his mind during his run to the title at Sea Island was securing a spot at the TOC, set for Jan. 6-9.

“It’s so cliche, but it’s truly an unbelievable feeling, it’s everything that I’ve dreamed of and what I’ve been working for since I was, literally, 9 years old,” Gooch said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “On Thursday of (the RSM) tournament I had a good round, I shot 63 or something like that, and so on the back nine I started thinking about Maui.

“I thought to myself, ‘Well, if you keep doing what you’re doing you’re going to be in the thick of things come Sunday.’ Yeah, man, it’s one of the things that you always think about when you think about winning on the PGA Tour is Maui, Masters, everything that comes with it.”

Gooch has enjoyed a solid PGA Tour career — he has 10 career top-10 finishes and 32 top-25 finishes — but he is also a man of the people.

After talking about his upcoming trip to the islands Wednesday, he planned to head out on a golf outing with his childhood friends, a group that included Philadelphia Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto.

Being No. 1 on the FedEx Cup list “is pretty sweet. It’s pretty sweet (to win) to end the fall season so I can enjoy it for a few months. Hopefully I can keep enjoying it for the next eight months, but it’s definitely cool to go golf with my buddies here at home, which I will be doing when we get done talking here.

“We like to talk a little smack and when the occasion arises I might have to throw in, ‘Well, you know, you’re talking to the No. 1 guy on the FedEx Cup so why don’t you chill out for a second?’ So, it’s good for the smack talking at home with buddies.”

Gooch interacts closely with his fans on the course and has Venmo’d small amounts of cash here and there to fans who lost on a bet placed on Gooch to do well in a tournament.

It started with a missed cut and a single fan on Twitter.

“It’s kind of a long story, but I had an underperforming week you could say, at the Tampa tournament,” Gooch said. “And I was headed to the airport Friday afternoon after missing the cut to fly back home and a guy on Twitter tweeted me a few times and he was just calling me a slouch and how he could beat me and blah, blah, blah.

“That happens enough that you know the guys that are talking a certain kind of way that they’ve gambled on you and so I just said, ‘Hey, what’s your Venmo — I’ll shoot you whatever I lost you.’ ”

The story didn’t end there.

“He goes, ‘Man, better than shoot me that money I should just play you for money’ or something to that extent,” Gooch said. “And so I was like, ‘OK, well I was going to be nice and send you some money, but this sounds like a way better idea. Why don’t we go play for some money? Let’s do it.’

“And then all of a sudden it felt like the whole Twitter golf world caught on to this and everyone got involved and I ended up shooting probably a dozen guys a few bucks here or there if they could prove that they had bet on me that week.”

The entire saga put a smile on Gooch’s face.

“So, I shot a few guys a few bucks to have a little bit of fun and a little bit of interaction and it made for a funny and entertaining Friday afternoon, for sure,” Gooch said. “Needless to say (the original guy), he kind of went quiet soon after we began and when real talking and exchanges started, he kind of ghosted me.”

On another occasion, he sent $15 to a man who asked for enough money to pay for his Chipotle order.

“I can’t remember the context, but he said something like, ‘I will bet you 10 bucks and that will be enough for Chipotle,’ ” Gooch said. “I sent him 15 bucks and said, ‘add guac to it’ or something like that to have a little fun with it.”

Gooch grew up in Midwest City, Okla., and still lives there with his wife Ally and daughter Collins, who was born in July. They live next door to Realmuto and his family that includes three children — Realmuto and Gooch have known each other since playing baseball together as 9-year-olds.

Gooch is a huge supporter of his alma mater, Oklahoma State, and a big fan of the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder.

“Especially with the Thunder being the only professional sports team in Oklahoma, that’s where my passion and my emotions lie from a fan’s perspective,” Gooch said. “I love all sports, I’ve followed sports my whole life and it’s so much fun having the Thunder here and we all try to get to as many games as possible.

“Unfortunately my schedule doesn’t allow me to get to games as much, but I’m always following on the road — I’m from Oklahoma City and I still live in Oklahoma City and it’s part of who I am.”

During the downtime forced by the COVID-19 pandemic, he helped his wife with her cookie business. Ally will put the cookies to the side after the holidays while she and Collins travel to Maui for the Sentry TOC for the first time in what Talor Gooch hopes is the first of many trips to the Valley Isle.

“It was a lot of fun, once we got married she moved to Oklahoma and quit her job in Dallas — she wanted to keep working, but we also wanted her to have a job where she could have the flexibility of traveling,” Gooch said. “She fell into doing cookies for some friends and family for some events and before we knew it they were looking like professionally done cookies.

“She was, like, ‘I’m going to give this a go.’ Man it turned out to be a really cool adventure for her and it was a lot of fun. The timing was perfect with COVID, so, I don’t know how much weight I gained but I wasn’t wearing the same size pants after the lockdown and eating a few cookies being the professional taste tester.”

* Robert Collias is at rcollias@mauinews.com.