16 golfers who had an unexpected invite to 2021 Tournament of Champions

When the 2021 Tournament of Champions gets underway in Kapalua, Hawaii on Thursday, there will be 16 golfers that would not normally be there. Due to coronavirus and the fact that many events on the PGA Tour were cancelled in 2020, the event will not only consist of winners on the PGA Tour from last year, but players who qualified for the 2020 PGA Tour Championship in Atlanta as well. Here is a look at the 16 players who did not win in 2020, but made the Tour Championship, and thus the Tournament of Champions.

1) Abraham Ancer–Currently 23rd in the world, the 29-year-old Mexican finished 18th at the Tour Championship. He represented the International Team at the 2019 Presidents Cup in Melbourne.

2) Cameron Champ–The 25-year-old from Sacramento is 72nd in the world. He has won twice on the PGA Tour in the past–the 2018 Sanderson Farms Championship in Jackson, Mississippi, and the 2019 Safeway Open in Scottsdale, Arizona.

3) Harris English–The 31-year-old from Valdosta, Georgia, is 29th in the world. English has won twice on tour, but has not won since 2013, when he won the FedEx St. Jude Classic and OHL Classic.

4) Tony Finau–The 31-year-old from Salt Lake City is 20th in the world. He previously won the 2016 Puerto Rico Open where he beat Steve Marino in a playoff.

5) Lanto Griffin–The 32-year-old from Mount Shasta, California is 63rd in the world. His lone PGA Tour win is the 2019 Houston Open.

6) Billy Horschel–The 42nd ranked player in the world is a five-time champion on the PGA Tour including the 2014 Tour Championship. A native of Grant, Florida, Horschel is now 34 years old.

7) Mackenzie Hughes–The 49th ranked player is 30 years old and is from Ontario, Canada. His lone career PGA Tour win was the 2016 RSM Classic in St. Simons Island, Georgia, where he won a five-player playoff. Among the players in the playoff was Horschel.

8) Kevin Kisner–The 36-year-old from Aiken, South Carolina is a three-time winner on the PGA Tour, and is 26th in the world. The most significant win was the 2019 World Match Play Championship, where he beat Matt Kuchar 3&2.

9) Hideki Matsuyama–The 28-year-old from Japan is 19th in the world. A five-time winner on the PGA Tour, Matsuyama has two World Golf Championship titles–the 2016 WGC HSBC Tournament of Champions in China, and the 2017 WGC Bridgestone Invitational in Akron, Ohio.

10) Kevin Na–The 37-year-old from Las Vegas is the 37th ranked player in the world. A four-time winner on the PGA Tour, Na won his last title in 2019, when he beat Patrick Cantlay to win his second Shriners Hospitals for Children Open.

11) Sebastian Munoz–The 27-year-old from Bogota, Colombia is 61st in the world. Munoz’s single PGA Tour win came at the 2019 Sanderson Farms Classic in Jackson, Mississippi, where he beat Sung-jae Im of South Korea in a playoff.

12) Joaquin Niemann–The native of Chile is one of the game’s rising stars at 22 years of age. At 45th in the world, Niemann won the 2019 Greenbrier Classic in West Virginia.

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13) Ryan Palmer–The 44-year-old from Amarillo, Texas is 30th in the world. He has won four times on the PGA Tour, including one title in Hawaii–the 2010 Sony Open in Honolulu.

14) Xander Schauffele–The 27-year-old from San Diego, California is sixth in the world. He has won four times on the PGA Tour, including the 2017  PGA Tour Championship, the 2018 WGC HSBC Champions event in Shanghai, and the 2019 Tournament of Champions.

15) Scottie Scheffler–The 24-year-old from Ridgewood, New Jersey is 32nd in the world. He has the distinction of being one of two players in the field in Kapalua this weekend never to have won on the PGA Tour before (the other is Ancer).

16) Brendon Todd–The 35-year-old from Pittsburgh is 47th in the world. He has won three times in the past, including the 2019 Mayakoba Golf Classic in Mexico.

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