HONOLULU (PA) -- Mercedes-Benz Championship winner Geoff Ogilvy is hoping to put an end to the curse of Kapalua by grabbing another PGA Tour victory as soon as possible.

Australian Ogilvy picked up the first winner's check of the year last weekend when he won the season-opening event for 2008's Tour champions, heading the 33-man field by six shots over Anthony Kim and Davis Love at Maui's Kapalua Resort.

He will tee off in the first full-field event of 2009 at the Sony Open at the Waialae Country Club in Honolulu, fully aware that past winners at Kapalua have not always translated their opening win of the year into sustained success.

In the 10 years since the tournament moved from La Costa to Kapalua's Plantation Course, just four golfers have gone on to score further wins that season, with Tiger Woods in 2000 the only player to follow up with a major success.

Ogilvy, the 2006 US Open champion, intends to break the pattern in 2009.

"Hopefully that's not true with me," he said. "Hopefully I can change the trend. But I don't know if it would be complacency or not. I don't know. The golf you play (in Hawaii) is so different from the rest of the year. That's probably not it. We're all good at adapting. I don't know.

"It's probably just a coincidence. Might be a bit of complacency," he added. "When you get to the top of the money list after one week, you get all excited, maybe you take the rest of the year for granted.

"Stuart (Appleby, who won from 2004-06) would have been three of those years," he explained. "He wouldn't have done that. Ernie (Els, in 2003) wouldn't have done that. Vijay (Singh, in 2007) definitely wouldn't have done that.

"Yeah, I don't know. It's probably just a coincidence. Hopefully I can change the trend so the coincidences go away."

Ogilvy was also reminded that his win last week had been in another high-profile, big money tournament, just as had his previous four victories -- the U.S. Open, two World Golf Championship titles and last month's Australian PGA Championship.

Again, he found it difficult to explain a reason why.

"People have asked me that and I'm not really sure actually," Ogilvy said. "I think maybe I enjoy the challenge of the bigger tournaments -- for sure especially on the tougher golf courses. I seem to enjoy the challenge and the big fields, I guess. I don't know.

"I think I just enjoy them more. I'm not saying that I don't enjoy any golf tournament, but I think there's something that really piques my interest a bit more in the bigger tournaments," he added. "I just go that extra, I don't know, level of commitment or something in the bigger tournaments. I'm not really sure."

Ogilvy added that he was not particularly concerned about discovering the reason.

"I don't want to analyze it too much because it's kind of like, 'How do you putt like that, Geoff?'

"If you start thinking about them, you're going to miss them. I don't want to analyse them too much," he added. "I think I just probably apply myself a little better, get a little more enjoyment out of the bigger tournaments. That's the only thing I can think of."

Ogilvy is looking forward to 2009 after his decision to return to the European Tour for the first time since 2000. Aside from the huge increase in prize money on offer with the inaugural Race To Dubai, the Australian said he was looking forward to the variation in courses and destinations he would encounter playing both in the United States and Europe.

"I'd lie if I said money wasn't a reason," he added. "There's a lot of money to play for now towards the end of the year. I'm not saying that's the only reason, but I'm saying that's one of the factors.

"More diversity. My schedule had kind of got very similar every year, just going to the same cities, playing the same tournaments," he explained. "I wanted to add a little bit more of a dimension to my schedule, a bit more cosmopolitan, and play a few more international tournaments, which I think is really good for your game and really good for golf.

"I'm really interested to see how this whole European Tour is going to step up with its Race to Dubai and I really wanted to be involved," he said. "Just a lot of reasons, but definitely part of the reason for sure is to add a bit more variety to the golf courses I play and variety to the places I play in."

Copyright 2009 PA Sport. All rights reserved.