The Sony Open isn't the first Tour event of the season, but for rank-and-file pros like winner Paul (Sunshine) Goydos, the new year starts here

	Paul Goydos won more at the Sony Open ($936,000) than he did in any of his 13 years on Tour. Fred Vuich/SI

By Michael Bamberger

The new season began last week, at the Sony Open, the tournament the players all call Hawaii. The Mercedes-Benz Championship, the one Vijay Singh won at Kapalua in the first week of January? That's a dressed-up exhibition, winners only, another chance for the rich to get richer. The real start -- caddie changes in place, new gizmos on the practice tee, virgin irons in the bag, the exquisite grind of the Tour, all in the name of staying out there -- began for real last week. Charles Howell, who finished a shot back, said you start every season with all manner of golfing resolutions, but they're all on a short leash, one bad shot away from being discarded. The veteran Paul Goydos, a master of deadpan with a fitting nickname, had only one good week in 2006, a second-place finish in the Chrysler Championship, the final full-field event of the year, providing him with a $466,400 paycheck that allowed him to save his card. "I spent 10 weeks hoping that what worked at the end of last year would work in the new one," he said. It did. By winning Hawaii (with new irons in an old carry bag), he earned a spot in Kapalua next year and playing privileges through the end of '08. Happy New Year, Sunshine.

Goydos began his Tour career in the Greg Norman era, when the conventional wisdom was that the season commenced at Doral, the week the Tour moved from California to Miami. But guys wrote that only because Norman had the microphone and he didn't much like playing in the West Coast events. The truth is that golf has no spring training. The Tour's checkered flag, the players in Hawaii will tell you, blows in a trade wind.

For most of Sunday it looked as if Luke Donald would take his third career title or Howell his second. To win the Sony you don't have to beat too many name players. The field at the Waialae Country Club was filled with kids, not only the teenagers (Michelle Wie, missed cut; Tadd Fujikawa, 20th) but also the fresh Q school graduates, the Nationwide upgraders, the various conditionals. Doug LaBelle II, straight off the Nationwide, tied for fourth and cashed a nice check for $204,750. (And isn't that what it's all about?) Stephen Marino, the quintessential pink-cheeked rookie with plenty of game, learned to deal with a crowd by playing his Thursday and Friday rounds with Wie -- and made it to the weekend.

Brendan de Jonge missed the cut but provided the new season's first travel horror story. He was home in Charlotte last Wednesday when he got a call informing him that he had a spot in the field off the alternate list. He arrived at the Honolulu airport on Thursday at 3:30 a.m., was on the tee four hours later, went out and shot 69 in the first Tour round of his life, then screwed up the story by missing the cut. As travel stories go, it will soon get topped. For now, though, it's the best one making the rounds.