Jordan Spieth is already working on a blowout win to start his 2016 PGA Tour season

The week at the Hyundai Tournament of Champions started with a wave of hype on just how loaded the 32-man field was for this opener in Maui. It’s an event that some of the top players in the world, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, and many Euros, often skipped because they have enough cash and travel to enough cool places that the long trip out to Hawaii wasn’t always worth adding to the schedule. But this year, however, four of the top six in the world were here, all four major winners from 2015, and a cadre of other studs showed up for this winners-only event. So, this was going to be a nice little dogfight among the best to start the year.

At the 36-hole mark, Jordan Spieth is wiping out those hopes for a competitive opener and re-asserting his claim as the No. 1 player in the world. The top three in the rankings -- Spieth, Jason Day and Rory McIlroy -- are all pretty tight in terms of ranking points. Spieth is starting the year with an impressive attempt to separate himself at No. 1.

Spieth started his first tournament of 2016 with what was, for him, a middling front nine. This, of course, was still a 3-under 33 but he missed a few opportunities and hit a couple loose shots that he was able to save with recoveries. By the ninth hole, however, he had turned it on and made five birdies over his last 10 holes Thursday night.

Spieth had a share of the lead for much of the opening round until Patrick Reed went nuts and played the final two holes in 3-under to zip past everyone on the leaderboard. Friday, it was Spieth’s turn to flip things on the board playing with Reed again in the anchor pairing at Kapalua. He blitzed the front nine, going out in 5-under 31 to take a multi-shot lead, continue the trend from 2015 and push this loaded field of competitors toward a weekend of resignation. The front nine ended with a little gravy, an eagle chip-in that may have been the beginning of the end of this 2016 opener.

The back nine was more of the same -- no bogeys, a few pretty saves and four birdies to extend the lead to four shots at the midpoint. Spieth doesn’t need any help but the golden child has been getting it this week. At the eighth on Thursday, he hit a poor tee shot that looked like it was going in the hazard. It got hung up just inches above the hazard line, and he chipped up for an easy par. On Friday, he blasted a putt that appeared to come up short on the 18th green (putting surfaces he said are the slowest he’s ever played on the PGA Tour). But thanks to, as he put it, a nice little cut out on the right side of the hole, the ball dropped in for one final closing birdie to further frustrate his opponents’ hope of a competitive weekend.

Spieth is up four shots but this is a course where low numbers are available. A player can, and perhaps will this week, post an 11-under 62 and shoot up the leaderboard. The conditions are relatively benign and a chase down is possible.

But the more likely scenario is Spieth doubling up and just extending his lead. He’s making almost no mistakes, and when he does, he’s got the recovery game to save a par anyways. The rest of the field seemed to realize it, too. After the round, Golf Channel ran a sequence of interview comments from various players -- Bubba Watson, Rickie Fowler, Steven Bowditch -- and they all expressed the same sentiment: Spieth is playing a different game so far and unless there’s a significant and unexpected deviation from that on the weekend, they won’t have a chance regardless of what they do or how many birdies they post.

This tournament probably won’t mean much in the larger scheme of 2016, but the dominating 36-hole start is a nice way for Spieth to maintain his grip on world No. 1 and reaffirm to the rest of the tour that he’s the one to beat each and every week. With that four-shot cushion, it’s hard to see that coming undone on a weekend that should signal this year is going be more of the same.