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00:00We welcome you back to the early line live right here on this Tuesday. It is New Year's Eve.
00:05Tomorrow is New Year's Day, a new year in 2025. A new PGA Tour season starts this Thursday
00:13off the mainland and on the Hawaiian Islands with the Century. So to help you get ready
00:19for a new year in golf and on the PGA Tour, we welcome on Keith Stewart live right here
00:24to this Tuesday on the early line. A happy New Year, Keith. Thank you for joining us
00:29to kick off a new PGA Tour campaign. Ben, Joe, it's great to be with you guys. And of course,
00:35Ben, if you see me stealing shirts from Joe's closet, then you know the PGA Tour is in Hawaii
00:40and it's time to kick things off. Let's go. Joe would look great in that Hawaiian shirt. There
00:45is no doubt about it. And Keith, you do as well. So it is the Century. They used to start the PGA
00:51Tour with the Tournament of Champions. We still will have a bunch of PGA Tour winners from a
00:56season ago play out in Maui to begin this week, but also some from the top 50 of the FedExCup
01:03points list from a year ago. Keith, let's start with the field and who we will see at the Century.
01:10What do you make of the crop of golfers that will begin 2025 on the PGA Tour?
01:16Ben, great breakdown. It's 60 guys at a field for $20 million purse, $3.6 million for first,
01:22no cut event, 72 holes Thursday through Sunday. These guys are going to play the Plantation Course,
01:28a par 73, almost 7,600 yards, the third longest course on the PGA Tour. And we've been coming
01:35here for a long time for the first event of the year since 1999. Remember Tiger winning here,
01:40JT a bunch of times, Jordan Spieth, the favorite and the number one player in the world, Mr. Scotty
01:46Scheffler had a little accident in the kitchen on Christmas Day, whether it was dinner, whether it
01:52was a knife, whether it was the stem from his wine glass, either way, he impaled his right hand
01:59and he needed a little surgery. So he's going to be out for about a month. So the top of the
02:02betting board is Xander Shoffley, Colin Morikawa, JT, and a couple of others. We have a really,
02:08really nice signature field to start the year. What do we know about the course, Keith,
02:14and who does it favor in this heading into this week? Well, you know what, Joe, going into 2025,
02:22I'm going to give you Keith's keys every week. And the first thing is Bermudagrass putting.
02:27These are the third largest greens on tour, 8,200 square feet on average. And I tell you what,
02:33they are slopey, you know, Bill Core, Ben Crenshaw designed from back in 1991 and Ben Crenshaw could
02:39putt. He could test the putters. It's Bermudagrass. And because we're out there on the island and we
02:43have a lot of trade wins, these greens will be slow and slopey. Free putt avoidance is a big key.
02:49Number two, par fours. We get an extra one this week. I mentioned it already. The scorecards par
02:5473. There's 11 par fours, eight of which are under 425 yards. It's a birdie fest on the par fours.
03:00If you can score there, you're going to do well against the field and separate. And the third
03:04thing is, is that, and this is my secret sauce for the week, is that the guys scoring around
03:09the greens, I mentioned those short par fours. These guys have a lot of pitches into some of
03:13these green complexes. There's a lot of elevation changes, very, very unique sort of short shots,
03:18two good comp courses here, Augusta National and Riviera, both places where you need your short
03:23game. In the last five years, the winners have gained more around the greens against the field
03:29than they have on approach. And you don't see that a lot. And that's why those are my three keys
03:34for this week at Kappa Lua. A short price on Xander Shoffley, the favorite to win the century
03:40at five to one, half the other prices for the remainder of the field. But Keith, normally,
03:45and in probably every other event he plays in this year, it wouldn't be Shoffley, it would be
03:49Scheffler atop the odds board entering an event. You mentioned the injury to Scotty Scheffler on
03:55Christmas night out for the next three to four weeks. With no Scotty Scheffler in the field
04:01at the century, how does it change your approach to the outright betting odds?
04:05Well, it gives us a lot of hope and optimism because we saw what he did at the hero,
04:08and we saw, frankly, what he did all last year with all the wins and the gold medal.
04:12So I love the fact that the top of the board, although it has some interesting people,
04:16you know, Xander, seven starts here, four top tens and a win. He's definitely someone to keep
04:21your eye on, but he doesn't have the closing power of a Scotty. For me, I'm looking at a guy
04:25like Colin Morikawa, plus 1200. He's been there five times, never finished worse than seventh.
04:32And the last couple of years, he really should have closed the event. For me,
04:35he's one of my early leans on the early line. The second guy, further down the board,
04:40I'm loving Adam Scott. Those Australians play really good at Kapalua. We've had six Australian
04:45winners, all right, in the last 20 years, guys. Adam Scott's had a great year. He was third the
04:50last time he teed it up over there at the DP World Tour Championship, right? So for him,
04:55at plus 4000, maybe we'll make a little money in this short field.
04:59I like the look, Keith Stewart. It is a great start to this year out on the PGA Tour in 2025.
05:06Hope you have a wonderful start to your year in 2025, both betting and ringing in a new year
05:12tonight. Keith Stewart, we appreciate the time. Hour number three of the early line comes up next.