Three Korean golfers are competing at the Sentry Tournament of Champions. The PGA Tour’s calendar-year opener tees off on its four-day run in Kapalua, Hawaii on Thursday. Rory McIlroy, who is currently at the top of the world rankings, opted to skip the tournament. The total prize purse of this year’s tournament has almost doubled from US$8.20 million last year to a whopping $15 million. Australian golfer Cameron Smith, last year’s winner, is absent after his departure to LIV Golf, an upstart professional golf circuit backed by Saudi Arabia. The traditional season opener is limited to golfers who won a tournament during the previous calendar year and those who qualified for the preceding Tour Championship. It is one of the Pga Tour’s ‘elevated purse’ events, in what is widely viewed as an effort to compete with the lucrative payouts of LIV Golfer, which is based in Saudi Arabia and is backed by the country’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Authority. The tournament is expected to attract some 39 top golfers, including Justin Thomas and Scottie Scheffler of the U.S. and Jon Rahm of Spain. It will be the first tournament of the 2013-14 PGA season in the United States and the first of the 2014-15 European Tour season. The winner will be announced at the end of the tournament on Friday. The prize purse for the tournament is US$15 million, up from $8.5 million in 2013.