Kapalua, Hawaii ? The PGA Tour already runs commercials to explain, “These guys are good.” It doesn’t need record scoring every week to drive home the point.

Ernie Els became the latest poster boy for low scoring when his winning score at the Mercedes Championships — 31 under par — shattered the tour record and left him so stunned that he sounded more like Yogi Berra than the Big Easy.

“I’ve had some good weeks in my career, but to shoot 31 under par, I obviously haven’t done that,” he said.

Then the light came on.

“Nobody’s done it,” he added with a laugh.

Winning the first tournament of the year means more, especially considering that records don’t last long on the PGA Tour.

“It will be nice to tell Samantha and Ben one day,” Els said, referring to his young children. Then he paused and knocked on the wooden table holding his trophy.

“If it holds up,” he said to more laughter. “At least I held the record for a while.”

How long is anyone’s guess.

The Sony Open begins Thursday, and all bets are off if the conditions are so calm that the skinny palm trees at Waialae Country Club don’t even budge.

The new motto on the PGA Tour: Go low or go home.

“Par doesn’t mean anything anymore,” Vijay Singh said. “Shooting 6 under and losing ground is no fun.”

This is no time to panic.

Wind is the best defense on any golf course, and there was hardly any for four days on the Plantation Course at Kapalua. The results were predictable:

l Eleven players finished at 20 under or better. David Duval (26 under in 1999) was the only player in the previous four years to do that.

l The average score was 69.14. The average score for the final round was 68.33.

l Rocco Mediate finished at 23 under. It was his best score in relation to par since he was 20 under at the 2001 Phoenix Open. Both times, he finished eight strokes behind.

“What happened to par? Where did it go?” Mediate said.

It went to the majors and The Players Championship.

Eliminate those five tournaments, and it has been nearly two years since a regular PGA Tour event was won at single-digit under par — the ’01 Nissan Open (9 under) and the ’01 BellSouth Classic (8 under). Both events had a combination of wind, rain and cold.

Low scoring is not all bad, though.

“You don’t want 40 U.S. Opens,” Jeff Sluman said. “Guys would be in a rubber room by the end of the year.”

Of course, 40 weeks of low scoring also can send players into therapy.

David Toms was 47 under par in consecutive PGA Tour events last year. All that got him was a tie for sixth (21 under at Disney) and a runner-up finish (26 under at Callaway Gardens).

The solution lies with how the golf course is set up. If these guys are good — and no one doubts that — then maybe it’s time for them to prove it.

Throw out the majors, The Players Championship and the Tour Championship, and 28 of the 41 tournaments were won at 15 under or better last year.

Kapalua was an anomaly. The wind typically blows hard off the coast of Maui, and even Els remarked after the first calm round, “It can’t stay like this. It’s impossible.”

It did, and there wasn’t much the PGA Tour could have done.

“You put us on the hardest golf course in the history of the world — with no wind — and we’ll destroy it,” Mediate said. “That’s what happened here.”