KAPALUA — Jon Rahm broke the PGA Tour scoring record in the 2022 Sentry Tournament of Champions at the Kapalua Plantation Course and finished second by a stroke.

On Sunday, he trailed by nine after leader Collin Morikawa birdied the first hole. This time, however, Rahm charged all the way back to win at the Kapalua Plantation Course.

Rahm fired a 10-under-par 63 in the final round to finish at 27-under 265 — six shots worse than he fired last year when Cam Smith outlasted him in a historic shootout — to beat Morikawa by two strokes after the third-round leader’s late collapse.

Rahm had two runner-up finishes here — including his blazing 33-under 259 last year — and was never worse than 10th in five previous starts at Kapalua prior to this year.

He said the win Sunday makes up for any frustration from 2022.

“It does. Yeah, it does. I’m not going to lie,” Rahm said. “Had I shot 60-under par in two starts here and not won either one of them, that would have been a hard pill to swallow. Something just doesn’t register to say that, right, to do that well and lose both times.”

Starting two pairings in front of Morikawa, Rahm methodically stalked him all day before coming in for the kill.

Through six holes, Morikawa still led Rahm by seven strokes, after nine holes Morikawa was six ahead of the eventual winner, and after 12 the margin was five.

Rahm put up a birdie-birdie-birdie-eagle stretch from holes 12 through 15 and clinched things with a 4 1/2-foot birdie putt on 18.

With Rahm at 24 under through 14, Morikawa was still three shots ahead as he finished 13.

The big turning point came when Rahm jammed home a 12-footer for eagle on 15, while moments later Morikawa bogeyed 14, leaving them tied at 26 under.

Morikawa bogeyed 15 to fall one shot behind.

As Rahm was parring 17, Morikawa spun his approach off the front of the green on 16, missed a 9-foot par putt and tapped in for bogey to fall two shots back.

Rahm slammed the door on 18, beginning with a rocket-launch drive that traveled 310 yards in the air before rolling 81 yards for a 391-yard bomb off the tee. With 259 yards to the hole for his second shot, Rahm hit into the primary rough, 33 feet from the hole. He chipped to 4 feet, 6 inches, and made the birdie putt to end all of the drama.

“I had the image in my head right before my turn to hit the putt on 18 because I was thinking, ‘Man, I don’t want to give him a chance to just chip in or make a putt or anything,’ ” Rahm said. “I just really want to get this one in. And I did. So that definitely was in my mind. I’m like, I don’t want to say 59 under and two years wasn’t enough.”

Rahm felt he had a chance to win on Sunday even though he started the day seven strokes off the lead. He matched the course record with a 61 in last year’s third round.

“Yes, yes. I thought I was going to, like I said earlier, have to get really close to 30 under,” Rahm said. “And again, had the same guy, the same Collin that we had the first three days shown up, he would have been a 30-some under. There’s very little we would have been able to do. A 59 on the golf course is tough, all right? Anywhere. But out here, 14 under’s not easy to do. You need a combination of both. Me having a really good day, which I did, and Collin not having his best.

“It kind of happened to where it overlapped a little bit where I started really kicking in my next gear and he made a few bogeys. But he was bogey-free until, what, until 14? Which is insane. But I’m lucky the golf gods were on my side in that sense. You needed a little bit of help from Collin in this situation.”

Morikawa has strong family ties to Maui and he acknowledged that he wanted to win this event badly, especially after starting the final round with a six-shot lead on the field at 24 under.

“Sadness. I don’t know. It sucks,” Morikawa said. “You work so hard and you give yourself these opportunities and just bad timing on bad shots and kind of added up really quickly. Don’t know what I’m going to learn from this week, but it just didn’t seem like it was that far off. It really wasn’t. Yeah, it sucks.”

Morikawa’s three straight bogeys on holes 14-16 Sunday were his only bogeys for the week.

“A little bit of both,” Morikawa said when asked if he lost or Rahm won the event. “I mean 1 under on this course is not a good score. It really isn’t. I was 3 under through whatever, six holes, three-putted 5 as well. He still shot 63. But I still, you know, I still had it within reach.

“If I don’t make those bogeys and I make par, we’re right there. So he definitely made the birdies when he needed to, but I also made bogeys. When you’re getting bogeys at that time of the tournament they’re costly. I definitely felt the weight of that.”

Tom Hoge (64) and Max Homa (66) tied for third at 23 under, and Tom Kim (68) and J.J. Spaun (69) both finished another shot back.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan held a roundtable discussion with assembled print media members Sunday and said this tournament has reached new heights as the first “designated” event on the schedule — among the incentives brought on by the challenge from the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series was the purse being raised from $8.2 million last year to $15 million this year.

Rahm collected $2.7 million for the victory.

When the Sentry TOC is the official opener on the PGA Tour schedule next year, the tournament will become even more significant.

“So we come here next year and it’s really the kickoff to the season,” Monahan said. “As much energy as we have and as great a field as we have (this year) I think there will be even greater energy because you want to get off to a fast start. I think you will see players playing more often on the front end, independent of the events they are committed to play.

“We have the top players playing together, knowing that they are going to play together, for them that puts them in the best competition position to compete for winning the biggest events out here, to prepare for the biggest events in our game and ultimately put themselves in the position to win the biggest prize money at the back end of the year.”

Specific changes to uplift and promote the event as the season opener next year are currently under discussion, but Monahan was clear that something will be done to boost the event even further.

“There’s a lot of discussion about that, there’s been a lot of discussion this week and there will be a lot of discussion coming out of the event, but absolutely we are going to, between NBC, Golf Channel, Sentry, our organization, we’re going to put a lot of emphasis (on the event),” Monahan said. “We’re going to have to educate everybody on what our schedule is in ’24 and part of that education is going to be the importance of this first event.

“And nothing changes as it relates: You’ve got to win to get here or you’ve got to be in the Tour Championship and so we know we’re going to have a great field. You can absolutely expect that we’re going to do everything we can to make the world know about the importance of this event.”

* Robert Collias is at rcollias@mauinews.com

PGA Tour Sentry Tournament of Champions

Sunday’s Final Round • At Kapalua Plantation Course

Jon Rahm, $2,700,000 64-71-67-63–265 -27

Collin Morikawa, $1,500,000 64-66-65-72–267 -25

Tom Hoge, $840,000 66-71-68-64–269 -23

Max Homa, $840,000 70-70-63-66–269 -23

Tom Kim, $555,000 65-69-68-68–270 -22

J.J. Spaun, $555,000 64-68-69-69–270 -22

Tony Finau, $368,750 67-69-69-66–271 -21

Matt Fitzpatrick, $368,750 66-69-66-70–271 -21

Kyoung-Hoon Lee, $368,750 68-69-67-67–271 -21

Scottie Scheffler, $368,750 66-66-69-70–271 -21

Luke List, $292,500 71-65-70-66–272 -20

Will Zalatoris, $292,500 69-69-69-65–272 -20

Sungjae Im, $265,000 66-72-65-70–273 -19

Jordan Spieth, $265,000 67-66-71-69–273 -19

Cameron Young, $265,000 70-70-69-64–273 -19

Patrick Cantlay, $241,000 70-70-66-68–274 -18

Brian Harman, $241,000 68-69-67-70–274 -18

Corey Conners, $229,000 68-68-72-67–275 -17

Viktor Hovland, $229,000 67-72-70-66–275 -17

Aaron Wise, $229,000 66-70-70-69–275 -17

Mackenzie Hughes, $220,000 66-74-71-65–276 -16

Hideki Matsuyama, $220,000 67-70-67-72–276 -16

J.T. Poston, $220,000 68-69-68-71–276 -16

Sepp Straka, $220,000 71-70-68-67–276 -16

Seamus Power, $213,333 68-69-70-70–277 -15

Scott Stallings, $213,333 67-72-68-70–277 -15

Justin Thomas, $213,333 70-70-67-70–277 -15

Trey Mullinax, $211,000 69-70-70-69–278 -14

Adam Scott, $210,000 70-68-72-69–279 -13

Russell Henley, $208,500 69-70-71-70–280 -12

Billy Horschel, $208,500 76-71-64-69–280 -12

Sam Burns, $207,000 70-75-67-69–281 -11

Sahith Theegala, $206,000 67-71-72-72–282 -10

Keegan Bradley, $205,000 70-70-73-70–283 -9

Ryan Brehm, $203,500 68-71-68-78–285 -7

Chez Reavie, $203,500 71-73-73-68–285 -7

Adam Svensson, $202,000 71-70-78-68–287 -5

Chad Ramey, $202,000 71-76-72-71–290 -2

Tournament of Champions winners at the Kapalua Plantation Course

(x-won in playoff)

2023–Jon Rahm

2022–Cameron Smith

2021–Harris English-x

2020–Justin Thomas-x

2019–Xander Schauffele

2018–Dustin Johnson

2017–Justin Thomas

2016–Jordan Spieth

2015–Patrick Reed-x

2014–Zach Johnson

2013–Dustin Johnson

2012–Steve Stricker

2011–Jonathan Byrd-x

2010–Geoff Ogilvy

2009–Geoff Ogilvy

2008–Daniel Chopra-x

2007–Vijay Singh

2006–Stuart Appleby-x

2005–Stuart Appleby

2004–Stuart Appleby

2003–Ernie Els

2002–Sergio Garcia-x

2001–Jim Furyk

2000–Tiger Woods-x

1999–David Duval