January 12, 2011 – While the Met Area remains frozen in a winter wonderland, the best golfers in the world are teeing it up in Honolulu, Hawaii, this week for the first full-field event of the 2011 PGA Tour season. The Sony Open in Hawaii begins on Thursday, January 13 at Waialae Country Club, one of the most scenic and historic tracks on the PGA Tour. The field includes four players with Met Area ties, each of whom looks to begin 2011 on a high note and improve his standing on Tour.

Of the four, Long Island native and 1994 Met Junior champion Marc Turnesa (left) is perhaps the happiest to be back in a PGA Tour field. Turnesa, 32, won the 2008 Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospital Open in his rookie year on Tour, but suffered a disc injury that forced him to miss the majority of the 2010 season. Because of this, Turnesa applied for, and was granted, a major medical extension and under PGA Tour guidelines has 21 events to earn $776,818—equal to 125th place on the 2010 PGA Tour money list. If he reaches this amount, he would retain his Tour card for 2012.

Former Garrison, N.Y., resident Johnson Wagner, who won five MGA major championships in 2001 and 2002, also won on the PGA Tour in 2008 and is looking to regain his footing. Wagner, 30, has conditional PGA Tour status due to his 126th-place finish on the 2010 money list, just one spot away from being fully exempt in 2011. Wagner will enter as many tournaments as possible early in the season with an eye toward improving his standing on Tour before the first “re-shuffle” takes place after the West Coast Swing ends in late February.

Joining Turnesa and Wagner are two PGA Tour rookies with connections to the Met Area: former Trump National-Bedminster assistant professional Jim Herman, 33, and 2008 St. John’s University graduate Keegan Bradley, 24. Both earned their 2011 PGA Tour cards by finishing in the top 25 on the Nationwide Tour money list in 2010. Herman won the Nationwide Tour’s Moonah Classic in February and went on to finish 19th on the money list. He also made the cut at the 2010 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, qualifying for the championship at the Sectional Qualifier run by the MGA at Canoe Brook Country Club in Summit, N.J. Bradley, who finished 14th on the money list, is the nephew of LPGA legend and World Golf Hall of Fame member Pat Bradley.

You can follow Turnesa, Wagner, Herman, Bradley and J.J. Henry (not in the Sony Open field), as well as other Met Area professionals competing on pro tours, throughout 2011 in the “Tour Watch” section of www.mgagolf.org.