2025 Newsmakers of the Year
To describe the sentiment that dominated the game of golf for much of the last 12 months, this one-word phrase likely suffices:
FINALLY!
Indeed, in ways large and small, 2025 turned out to be a year in which patience was rewarded. The most obvious example came in April, when Rory McIlroy ended an 11-year winless drought in majors, beating Justin Rose in a playoff to claim the Masters title in his 17th appearance at Augusta National. An agonizingly bumpy final round only made the victory sweeter as McIlroy became the sixth golfer to claim the men's career Grand Slam.
Yet McIlroy wasn’t the only golfer to turn a career chapter in 2025. So did Scottie Scheffler (winning majors for the first time beyond Magnolia Lane), J.J. Spaun (giving journeymen a hero with his out-of-nowhere U.S. Open triumph) and Happy Gilmore (coming out of retirement to save a sport). TGL played its long-awaited inaugural season, Tommy Fleetwood grabbed his long-awaited first PGA Tour winner and Cypress Point made a long-awaited return to golf’s competitive spotlight. Heck, even reasonable solutions to slow play seemed to emerge after centuries decades years of hand-wringing.
All these moments and more can be found in Golf Digest’s top 25 Newsmakers of the year. Our annual list explores the individuals, teams and events that helped define the year. As we acknowledge every year, some are obvious (a road Ryder Cup win for Europe), some unexpected (had you heard of Brian Rolapp or Craig Kessler before this spring?), some happy (the rise of Jeeno Thitikul) some tragic (the L.A. fires) and some still unresolved (will there ever be a deal between the PGA Tour and the PIF?).
We hope this provides an entertaining way to recall the year that was and frame where the game is going. —Ryan Herrington
No. 1: Rory McIlroy
It was his year. A year that delivered what everyone wanted for him but feared he couldn’t do. A year where the victory lap took some unexpected twists and curious drops, including a homecoming and home triumph. A year that at times transformed his beloved arena into a theater of suffering—but didn’t keep him from emerging intact on the other side.
A year that could only belong to Rory McIlroy.
The Northern Irishman, who turned 35 in May, enjoyed an auspicious start to his season, contending in Dubai, winning at Pebble Beach and launching his tech-infused simulator golf league with Tiger Woods. In March, he outlasted J.J. Spaun in a Monday finish for his second career Players Championship title. His TPC Sawgrass triumph was his 28th tour win and 43rd worldwide victory, a testament to his resilience in a sport where consistency is elusive. And yet, because his major total of four remained frozen in time for more than a decade—a number that refused to climb despite countless opportunities—he continued to be viewed mainly through the prism of who he once was and what he could become again, a stigma that could only be altered by changing that “four” to “five.”
It looked as if nothing was going to change at Augusta after McIlroy was seven shots back to end Day 1. Only McIlroy answered with vigor with back-to-back 66s, owning a two-shot heading into Sunday, his first 54-hole Masters lead since the first time Augusta broke his heart back in 2011. Sunday was set to be the crowning achievement of McIlroy's illustrious career, or its most devastating chapter.
What transpired on April 13 defies compression into tidy sentences; the weight of it, the scale of it, demands to be experienced in full. Go back now and relive the round that has crystallized into time, the one that culminated with McIlroy collapsing to the earth, overcome by the pursuit of the green jacket that was now in his grasp.
“It's a dream come true. I have dreamt about that moment for as long as I can remember,” McIlroy said in his new wardrobe. “There were points in my career where I didn't know if I would have this nice garment over my shoulders, but I didn't make it easy today. I certainly didn't make it easy. I was nervous. It was one of the toughest days I've ever had on the golf course.”
In the days following McIlroy's grand slam triumph, there was the belief he would finally be liberated from his quest. Instead, his post-Masters victory lap spiraled into something disorienting, punctuated by media confrontations at the PGA Championship and U.S. Open that felt jarringly out of character. When he acknowledged his frustration with press coverage, insisting on his right to act as he pleased, it felt like watching someone torch the foundation of their public identity. For a player whose enormous popularity rests on being golf's moral north star, the behavior seemed not merely incompatible with who we think he is but almost willfully self-destructive.
Which is why the Open Championship proved just as vital to McIlroy's year as the Masters. Scottie Scheffler lifted the claret jug, yet somehow he felt like a footnote to McIlroy, who competed for his countrymen an hour from where he learned the game as a boy. What followed McIlroy through Royal Portrush that week transcended a golf tournament, a communion between athlete and homeland, something that defies neat categorization. The roars were deafening, sustained, primal; the kind that cannot be manufactured, erupting purely from instinct and collective soul. All of it for a man who finished seven shots back.
"There's a lot of gratitude, and yeah, a lot of pride," McIlroy reflected afterward. "A lot of pride that I am from these shores, and in part with the way I've played and advocated for this little country. For me to be in front of everyone here at home and to get that reception up the last—absolutely incredible. I'll remember that for a long time." A month later, McIlroy answered that love by winning the Irish Open at the K Club in a playoff, the circle somehow complete. But he was about to experience something far less hospitable.
Every fear about what Bethpage's crowds might become materialized at the Ryder Cup. Between the early blowout and a crowd that seemed more gladiatorial than golf, the partisan spectacle turned vicious, with McIlroy absorbing the cruelest of it. Three days of taunts about his marriage, his family, the ugliest rumors dragged into daylight, all while he tried to lead his team to victory. A lack of basic humanity that was staggering. Yet McIlroy won three and a half points in his first four matches, then pushed World No. 1 Scheffler to the final hole on Sunday. It was a performance that revealed more about his character than his golf game ever could, and a window into the fortitude required not just to endure that week but to excel within it.
McIlroy's year closed on quieter, more triumphant ground. He captured his seventh Race to Dubai title in November, surpassing Seve Ballesteros on the all-time European Tour Order of Merit wins and moving within one of Colin Montgomerie's record. He finished his season at the Australian Open, perhaps a signal of future ambitions, a more globally-minded approach to his schedule. Whatever lies ahead, his present is undeniable: McIlroy ends 2025 as the sport's gravitational center. —Joel Beall
No. 2: Scottie Scheffler
The best press conference in golf this year came courtesy of Scottie Scheffler on Tuesday at the Open Championship, when he faced a room full of reporters and said, "this is not a fulfilling life." What he meant was that even victory at the highest level—which he has achieved more than any other golfer in the past three years—comes with only a fleeting sense of joy, and that if you want to live a fulfilled life, you better seek deeper satisfaction.
The humble Texan spoke at length, and without either shame or fear of being mocked, with quotes like, "sometimes I don't see the point" and "it's an unsatisfying venture." It was the rare kind of openness that inspired people like me to write long pieces about his perspective, and that also inspired more than a few bad misinterpretations. Had he lost his desire? Was he ungrateful? Was this whining?
No, no and no, but especially no on point one—a few days later, he would prove his desire was stronger than ever when he captured the claret jug at Royal Portrush for his second major of the year.
For Scheffler, 2025 was the year when he diversified his greatness. At 29, he’d already amassed a hall-of-fame résumé, and all he could add was variety. He started that mission at Quail Hollow in May, winning the PGA Championship to bag a new major along with his two Masters titles, and took his next leap forward at Portrush, proving he could win in Europe on a links course.
The completeness of Scheffler game wasn't really in doubt, but these wins to go with four other tour titles in the last 12 months, certified it. So did his consistently superior performance in a host of other metrics: In 2025, Scheffler was first on the tour in … (takes deep breathe):
Strokes gained/total (2.73)
SG/approach (1.291)
SG/tee to green (2.361)
Scoring average (68.131)
Scoring average actual (67.99)
Round 1 scoring (67.45)
Round 2 scoring (68.00)
Round 3 scoring (68.40)
Round 4 scoring (68.10)
Front nine scoring (33.71)
Back nine scoring (34.28)
Early scoring (67.88)
Late scoring (68.10)
Bogey avoidance (10.56 percent)
Par-4 scoring (3.89)
Bounce Back (36.36 percent)
Official Money ($27,659,550)
The fact that he can wrestle with the ephemeral nature of the joy that follows conquest, while still wanting that conquest more than ever before … well, this is fear-inspiring stuff. The best compliment we can pay Scheffler in 2025 is that if he hadn't finished 2024 by cutting his hand in a Christmas Day ravioli incident, thus placing a minor speed bump in his tour of dominance, he probably would have won the Masters, too. And while he's not No. 1 on this list, you should keep in mind when you read the top entry that in his final act of the year, on a Sunday in Long Island, Scottie Scheffler went head-to-head with a noteworthy opponent. It may not have mattered very much by then, but he won that, too. —Shane Ryan
No. 3: The Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black
It was always a surprising decision for the PGA of America to name Keegan Bradley the 2025 U.S. Ryder Cup captain, but we couldn't be absolutely sure that it was a bad decision until the action began in September at Bethpage Black. After the first tee shot was hit on Friday morning, though, it didn't take long. The inexperienced Bradley made one puzzling decision after another, ran up against an organizational juggernaut in Team Europe and managed to do something that hadn't been done in 13 years by losing a home Ryder Cup.
That's the negative headline of what went down in late September. The somehow-even-worse headline was the grotesque spectacle of the New York fans "interacting" with the European team, and particularly with Rory McIlroy. Enough people worried about this beforehand that it became a constant talking point (and Europe went so far as to practice with VR headsets simulating the worst heckling they could imagine), but if you thought that the fans wouldn't live up to the hype, you were wrong. They managed to stop short of physical violence, but every kind of verbal harassment was on the table, from mid-swing taunts to slurs to direct attacks on family members. There was even a beer-throwing incident that was analyzed like the Zapruder film in the aftermath. It was a terrible showing for New York fans, not the best look for the PGA of America and pretty much an all-around embarrassment for American sports culture generally.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the Ryder Cup?
Well, the positive headline is that Europe, returning 11 victorious players and one victorious captain from Rome in 2023, did just about everything right for two days as they sprinted to an insurmountable 11½-4½ lead. Great partnerships, transcendent play by the likes of McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose and Jon Rahm, and a team spirit the U.S. couldn't begin to match all contributed to the slaughter. Luke Donald has etched his name in the annals of great Ryder Cup captains, and the choice to bring him back after Rome looks now like a stroke of genius. Mercifully, too, the decade-long era of home routs in the Ryder Cup is over.
Sunday singles was almost an afterthought, but it shouldn't be. There, the American players proved that whatever else, they still have the best individual golfers in the world. The foreign coronation was rudely interrupted by a jaw-dropping comeback, and Europe barely had the juice to hang on for a narrow 15-13 win. The lasting images of this Ryder Cup will be Europe's brilliance on the course, the delirious bus party that followed and perhaps Shane Lowry holding the trophy beneath an ill-advised Bradley quote that Europe emblazoned on its own wall. But we should remember Sunday, too, and the tantalizing glimpse of how it all might have been different if the Americans possessed the weapon that remains undefeated against talent alone: competent leadership. —S.R.
No. 4: PGA Tour/PIF Stalemate
It’s hard to remember now, but at the start of 2025 there was a genuine belief that the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the money behind the upstart LIV Golf League, were close to finalizing a deal that would finally end golf’s civil war more than 18 months after the two sides brokered an initial framework agreement announcement in June 2023. Not only was President Trump’s Department of Justice easing off the antitrust investigation into the tour, but Trump himself—who had asserted he could fix the schism in “15 minutes” if elected—took a hands-on role in the proceedings. When PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and Tiger Woods spoke in February at the Genesis Invitational, days after meeting Trump at the White House, a deal felt inevitable, with Monahan saying the goal was to have “the game of golf operating under one tour with all the top players playing on that one tour.” When asked if that meant the end of LIV Golf, Monahan referred to the “reunification of the game.”
As we all know now, the good vibes abruptly faded when a second White House summit between tour leadership and PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan—LIV Golf's de facto boss—collapsed after four hours. Sources told Golf Digest that Al-Rumayyan left bewildered and furious, calling the tour's proposals not just inadequate but insulting. The impasse remained unchanged: The PIF demanded LIV and team golf be integrated into the PGA Tour ecosystem; the tour insisted on one unified circuit. Weeks later, PIF sent a formal offer to tour headquarters—$1.5 billion with LIV preserved intact—which the tour rejected. Sources say the sides have barely communicated since.
The stalemate lingers with the two sides dug in on some fundamental beliefs. The PIF hold fast to the idea the tour's private-equity backers, the Strategic Sports Group, want that $1.5 billion. PIF is accustomed to getting its way, and expects that pattern to hold. But the PGA Tour operates on a different calculation: LIV accomplished its soft-power mission by cultivating ties with Trump and the White House, and despite its vast resources, won't continue incinerating billions on a league that can't gain traction. With TV ratings climbing in 2025, little appetite exists on the tour side to reintegrate LIV members—beyond a handful of marquee names like Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka. There are those in tour leadership who do have concerns about the long-term consequences of perpetual warfare with the resources of PIF; however fresh rumors of Koepka eyeing an exit (reportedly willing to sit out all of 2026), combined with Rahm being the only major acquisition since LIV's 2022 launch, have convinced a faction within the tour that they hold the leverage.
What hope still remains that a deal could be had on the PIF/LIV side that new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp could be more amenable to negotiations that then past regime. Conversely, Rolapp has publicly stated his focus is on his tour and his tour alone. As for LIV, Dustin Johnson did renew with the Saudi circuit, and there’s hope that DeChambeau will follow. The league has reapplied with the Official World Golf Ranking to try to gain accreditation. Yet it appears LIV is heading into another season without any additional marquee signings, and a Koepka departure would be a significant blow to its aspirations as a competitive entity.
The PGA Tour is expected to roll out a new schedule, possibly as soon as 2027. But for those hoping for reunification in men’s professional golf, that date remains TBD. —J.B.
No. 5: Keegan Bradley
“I think in a lot of ways it’s the best year of my career,” he said.
It also was one of the most difficult to enjoy, balancing golf against his role as an outside-the-box U.S. Ryder Cup captain. And after Europe invaded Bethpage Black in September and retained the Ryder Cup with a 15-13 victory, Bradley could only see the year as a monumental disappointment.
"You win, it's glory for a lifetime," Bradley said a month after the defeat. "You lose, it's 'I'm going to have to sit with this for the rest of my life.’ There's no part of me that thinks I'll ever get over this.”
There was always going to be room for second guessing if the Americans lost at home, but Bradley’s angst is uniquely bittersweet. The 39-year-old Vermont native had a playing record that made it reasonable to pick himself to serve as the first playing captain in the Ryder Cup since Arnold Palmer in 1963. In a seeming act of selflessness—and after months of will-he-or-won’t-he drama—Bradley decided to forgo playing to focus on winning. But what if the best way for the Americans to win was for him to have played? It’s a conundrum that can never be fully answered.
On the heels of winning $2.1 million to beat Tommy Fleetwood, Shane Lowry and Xander Schauffele in the Skins Game in November, Bradley said he was starting to feel more like himself. But there was no question the hurt lingered. “The darkest time of my life, probably … definitely of my career,” he said.
So, indeed, the former PGA Championship winner played well in 2025, but the way events transpired at Bethpage, none of that mattered. “When you factor in the Ryder Cup, it’s an ‘F’. You’ve got to go and win that,” he said when asked to assign a letter grade to his season. “I was talking to my coach, he said, ‘Remember, you won this year.’ I was like, 'No, I don't remember that at all.'”
In a historical context, it’s likely no one else will remember that, either. —Dave Shedloski
No. 6: Tommy Fleetwood
If you can stomach a grown man talking about his Twitter/X account for a moment, bear with me while I tell you that one of my most popular tweets this year, with 1.5 million(!) views, was this one from Saturday, Aug. 9, during the first event of the FedEx Cup playoffs:
People loved it. I even had a professional golfer compliment me on it a couple days later. And I mention this not to brag about a tweet, god help me, but to make the point that this was the version of Tommy Fleetwood that resonated with fans as recently as early August. That's not that long ago! Very late in the summer, with the season almost fully spent and all the majors in the rearview, we were looking at Tommy Lad as a vulnerable gazelle who found himself moments from a violent mauling at the hands of an alpha predator every time he got in contention at a PGA Tour event.
And not without reason! He hadn't won a tour event in his entire career—earning more money ($21 million) than any non-winner in golf history—and had blown it against Keegan Bradley at the Travelers a couple weeks earlier. At 34, he was becoming a (far) more likable version of Lee Westwood—the eternal silver medalist. Hell, he actually won a silver medal at the 2024 Olympics! And though I was wrong on the details when I wrote that tweet during Memphis (it was Justin Rose who got him, not Scheffler), I was right that he'd fade on Sunday. We had him pegged.
But mannnn, how things change. I won't use the word "resurrection" for what happened to Fleetwood in the final two months of the season, due to certain lookalike issues, but it was something close to that. When he won the Tour Championship (and with it the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup title) two weeks after Memphis, he went from our sad little brother to the redemption story of 2026. Then he became a predator in his own right, absolutely dominating the Americans at the Ryder Cup, winning in India and stringing together three straight top-three finishes on the DP World Tour to close out the year. It was an immediate transformation, and a total vibes change. How to describe the new vibes? The Europeans probably put it best on their never-ending bus ride Sunday night in Long Island: "TOMMY, TOMMY TOMMY, TOMMY TOMMY!"
He's now ranked third in the world, he's a genuinely feared competitor, and all eyes will be on him next year at the majors. His golf was already sublime before East Lake, but getting that first American win changed how we thought of Tommy, and what we expect from him in 2026. —S.R.
No. 7: TGL
The golf ecosystem has expanded in numerous ways in recent years, beyond tours and 72-hole tournaments. Most conspicuously into the fray in 2025 stepped TGL, the indoor simulator league created by TMRW Sports partners Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and former Golf Channel executive Mike McCarley.
The league, which consisted of six four-man teams of PGA Tour players representing cities around the country (despite every match being played in a specially designed arena in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.), enjoyed a successful debut. Star athletes and celebrities bought in and showed up for the 15-hole matches, and television ratings on ESPN averaged 513,000 viewers. A 15-match regular season culminated in a playoff (sans teams led by Woods and McIlroy) eventually won by the Atlanta Drive squad of Patrick Cantlay, Lucas Glover, Billy Horschel and Justin Thomas.
Of course, the inaugural season was not without its challenges. Calibrating yardages on approach shots on the simulator was a hit-and-miss proposition, and putting on the synthetic green proved tricky. Short-game shots were an adventure, too, especially out of the bunker—underscored most overtly by Kevin Kisner's bladed wedge that clanged off the flagstick and sent Woods, his Jupiter Links teammate, into spasms of laughter. It also epitomized the struggles of Woods' Jupiter Hills team throughout the season.
Yet when all was said and done, there was plenty of energy in SoFi Center throughout Year 1, and the league accomplished its goal of enabling players to show more personality. Horschel emerged as one of the more animated players, performing the "Dirty Bird" before and after the debut match for Atlanta. He also produced clutch golf; his 18-foot birdie putt forced overtime in the TGL final that led to eventual victory over New York Golf Club.
While the system had to be tweaked after the season began, the concept of "the Hammer," in which one team could press another to increase the value of a hole, was entertaining and strategically consequential.
“I would say to anybody in this room … I can’t buy stock in it, but I would buy stock in TGL,” Arthur Blank, owner of the Atlanta Drive, said in August at the Tour Championship. “I think there was a lot of wisdom in the guy on my left here [McCarley], a lot of wisdom with Tiger and Rory to support the vision and build a vision. The reality is that if you look at the game of golf, there are … so many strong waves, support waves of strength behind golf right now, and they all fit what TGL is about.”
Season 2 tees off at 3 p.m. ET Dec. 28 on ABC (the first time on network TV) with the Drive facing the New York Golf Club, led by Xander Schauffele, in a rematch of last year’s final. Prior to the match, a championship banner will be hung at SoFi Center to recognize Atlanta’s title. —D.S.
No. 8: J.J. Spaun
The 35-year-old began 2025 as an underdog, but ended it as a bona fide bulldog. Spaun lost a Monday playoff to Rory McIlroy at the Players Championship in March. Little did golf fans know, however, that the biggest moment of his career would come three months later in the U.S. Open. A Sunday front-nine 40 at Oakmont seemed to end his chances at winner the major, but the California journeyman in his ninth season on tour but with just one win previously shot a back-nine 32 and held off a bevy of bigger names. He sealed his maiden major championship with one of the greatest putts in golf history—a 64-foot birdie bomb that permanently vaulted him from journeyman status and made L.A.B. Putters a major player in the equipment space as well.
“As bad as things were going, I just still tried to just commit to every shot,” Spaun said of his back-nine rally after. “I tried to continue to dig deep. I've been doing it my whole life.”
Spaun’s dream year—after contemplating retirement the previous offseason—had him closer than anyone would have expected to being a PGA Tour Player of the Year candidate, his playoff loss to McIlroy and another loss in extra holes to Justin Rose in the FedEx Cup Playoffs narrowly keeping him from two other huge titles. And although Team USA lost the Ryder Cup, Spaun played admirably as a rookie at Bethpage Black. Which leads many to believe he won’t be a one-hit wonder. —Alex Myers
No. 9: Jeeno Thitikul
Jeeno Thitikul emerged as the new World No. 1 in August, surpassing Nelly Korda, and the 22-year-old Thailand star took over in dominant fashion.
After she obtained the new title—which she previously held for a short stint—Thitikul soared, putting together the most consistent, impressive season on the LPGA Tour. The top-10 queen (she had 14 in 2025) won the Mizuho Americas Open early in the year, then captured the Buick LPGA Shanghai in October to become the first multiple event winner on tour in a season that had a record 29 different champions.
No golfer is perfect, of course. With the tournament title seemingly in hand at the Kroger Queen City Championship in September, Thitikul shockingly four-putted the final hole and lost. She also lost in a playoff to Grace Kim in the Amundi Evian Championship in July, missing a chance to win her first major.
Still, Thitikul didn’t let those misses define her. She dominated the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship, shooting 26 under to win the $4 million first prize for a second straight year, and was named the Rolex Player of the Year.
She made history, too. She won the Vare Trophy with a 68.681 scoring average, breaking Annika Sorenstam’s mark that stood for 23 years.
“Standing here with the trophy on Sunday, it’s more than I really, really could ask for,” Thitikul said. “Definitely all that Vare Trophy, player of the year is always going to represent how consistent you are in the long season.”
Thitikul has 60 top-10s in 98 career starts, and it’s clear the Thai star has blossomed and come into her own, and we can’t wait to see what she does for an encore in 2026. —Jill Painter Lopez
No. 10: Golf Influencers
Golf influencers are nothing new. They’ve been charging toward the mainstream ever since Paige Spiranac became a SI Swimsuit cover girl. In 2025, however, the medium, led by the emergence of YouTube as the biggest golf broadcaster on earth not named CBS or NBC, finally got its call-up to the big leagues.
Until this year, much of the growth in the influencer space came in the form of PGA Tour-sanctioned creator competitions—such as the Creator Classic, with the likes of Gabby DeGasperis (aka Gabby Golf Girl, above) and her 1 million Instagram followers competing—and moonlighting pros like Bryson DeChambeau and the Bryan Bros., who have earned a legion of online fans who have never watched them play a single round on their professional circuits.
This fall, though, the influencer industry staked its biggest claim yet when popular YouTube crew Good Good Golf was unveiled as the title sponsor of next year’s Good Good Championship, a new PGA Tour event that sees the world’s top professional league return to Austin, Texas.
If the move demonstrated how pro golf and influencer golf can co-exist moving forward, Barstool Sports’ Internet Invitational, which averaged more than 4.1 million views per episode following its premiere in November, showed how the medium can stand on its own. With a seven-figure purse on the line, the 48-influencer match-play event produced one viral moment after the next and will surely return bigger and better in 2026. Does that mean more competition for the PGA Tour or a fertile new source of collaboration? Only time will tell, but one thing is clear:
Golf influencers—love them, loathe them or something in between—are here to stay. —Coleman Bentley
No. 11: Ben Griffin
Maybe we should have known the Ben Griffin breakout was coming. At a Maxfli press event the week of the Cognizant Classic at PGA National in February, Griffin revealed during a brief chat with reporters (including this one) that he had just begun a creatine regimen that morning. I tweeted out this information and soon learned of the hardo creatine community, who informed me the creatine wouldn’t kick in for weeks. Mind you, Griffin did post a T-4 that week, his second in a row.
Nearly two months later, the soft-spoken North Carolina native picked up his first PGA Tour victory alongside good friend Andrew Novak in the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, a team event. Griffin soon backed it up with an individual win at Colonial, a solo second at the Memorial (a signature event) and a pair of top-10s in the PGA Championship and U.S. Open. He rode this incredible wave to an appearance on the U.S. Ryder Cup team and even added another win during the FedEx Cup Fall for good measure. It was an improbable career year for the 29-year-old who stepped away from golf entirely in 2021 to be a mortgage loan officer.
As Griffin racked up the high finishes, it was revealed that there was more than just a few scoops of creatine behind his resurrection. Griffin stopped drinking alcohol in-season. He went vegan. He wore giant Aviator sunglasses that many poked fun at, only for Griffin to reveal that the shades help with a vision problem he went to see an eye doctor for in 2024 (they help with green-reading, too). Oh, and don’t forget the switch to a Maxfli ball. After the year he had—which included getting married in December—The Ben Griffin Method (no alcohol, vegan diet, Uswing Mojing Sunglasses, creatine regimen) could wind up being the hottest trend of 2026 in professional golf. —Christopher Powers
No. 12: Brian Rolapp and Craig Kessler
Two men, hired to help reinvent their respective tours, started their new posts just 13 days apart. Craig Kessler took the reins on July 15 as the LPGA’s 10th commissioner after most recently working at the PGA of America. Brian Rolapp was hired from the NFL to replace commissioner Jay Monahan. He started his new role as PGA Tour CEO on July 28.
Although the end goal is similar, both men have very different tasks in front of them—and both have wasted little time diving in headfirst.
Rolapp was specifically brought in as a golf outsider who would not be afraid to take bold steps in navigating professional golf’s evolving landscape. The past is the past, he’s only concerned with the future of his tour. In a short time, the 53-year-old has already made numerous leadership changes in Ponte Vedra Beach, and if you listen to several tour players over the past few weeks, plans are in place to completely alter the PGA Tour schedule as early as 2027. Harris English talked about the potential for a 20-tournament schedule starting in mid-February, after football season, while Tiger Woods discussed more last week at the Hero World Challenge saying they know they need to improve the product.
Improving the product is also on the agenda for Kessler, who already has signed a new partnership with Trackman and FM—a property insurer—to enhance television coverage with more cameras and microphones at all 2026 tournaments. Every round will be broadcast live, which hasn’t happened since Golf Channel started broadcasting events in 1995. Kessler, 39, also brought Aramco on as a title sponsor, opening the tour directly to investment from Saudi Arabia, and has significantly improved communication with staff, sponsors and players.
It's unclear what the LPGA and PGA Tour will look like in a few years, but it is clear both will hardly resemble what they look like today because of the men who started their new gigs only 13 days apart back in July. —Jay Coffin
No. 13: Players vs. Media
Following a disappointing second-place finish at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March, Collin Morikawa made the decision to skip all media obligations and leave Bay Hill. The two-time major winner is not the first pro golfer to do this, and he won't be the last, but he did make things more explicit the next week at the Players Championship, when he said he didn't "owe" the media anything. That provoked a reaction from a few corners, most notably Paul McGinley and Brandel Chamblee at the Golf Channel, followed by a double-down from Morikawa, who fired back with one of the more absurd quotes of the year: "It might have been a little bit harsh [to say] that I don't owe anyone, but I don't owe anyone."
In turn, a wider debate ensued, thanks also in part to Rory McIlroy’s post-Masters funk with writers. Mind you, my position has been that the concept of "owing" the media is both irrelevant and silly, and that the real point should be finding ways to get along where our missions overlap, not to mention to being adults about those times when we're mis-aligned. Writing those words felt like throwing sand into the wind at the time, and it feels even more like that now—player access seems to diminish with each passing year, the humanity is leached out of stories because writers can't write what they can't see, mistrust escalates and everything gets worse.
How does it change? It's an impossible question to answer, because the idealistic version—far less influence from agents, more player access, less clickbait from the media—just isn't happening. It sounds cynical, but like a lot of problems facing our world right now, it's hard to see a solution, and hard not to see this relationship deteriorating as the years move along. —S.R.
No. 14: Los Angeles fires
As the world watched in horror and disbelief on the morning of Jan. 7, 2025, large portions of Los Angeles were burning. The two most ferocious fires—one in the tony Pacific Palisades community on L.A.’s west side and the other to the east, in working-class Altadena—would, over many days, directly claim 31 lives, destroy 18,000 homes and structures and char 57,500-plus acres.
More than 220,000 people were at some point evacuated from their neighborhoods, and among those on Jan. 7 were residents from an area beloved to golf fans. Riviera Country Club, the home course for Hollywood celebrities and pro athletes, and the longtime host of L.A.’s PGA Tour event (along with multiple major championships), became the focus of reports as the Palisades fire’s spread. The club occupies a canyon just to east of the town of Pacific Palisades. There were fears the fire could quickly engulf Riviera’s neighborhood, and Internet videos showed flames rising on a hillside, looking ominously close to the club, where hospitality areas were already under construction ahead of February's Genesis Invitational.
Thanks to the work of firefighters and perhaps an assist from Mother Nature with the wind direction, Riviera and its immediate vicinity were spared. But most of Pacific Palisades lay in ruins, with homes, schools, churches and grocery stores destroyed. Amid such a tragedy, the club and the PGA Tour faced a difficult question: Could they possibly move forward with the $20 million signature event in only four weeks?
After a flurry of speculation about where or if the Genesis would take place, the tour announced on Jan. 24 that the tournament would be moved to San Diego’s Torrey Pines South Course, which still had in place the infrastructure from hosting the Farmers Insurance Open. “We’re in unprecedented territory,” John Howard, San Diego’s city golf manager, told Golf Digest at the time.
The stellar field arrived the week of Feb. 10, and Genesis announced that it was contributing $8 million in tournament vehicles and cash to fire relief efforts. Torrey South played as tough as always, and the tournament got a marquee winner when Ludvig Aberg birdied four of the last six holes on Sunday, shot 66 to finish at 12 under, and beat Maverick McNealy by a shot.
Sadly, not every golf course fared as well as Riviera. In Altadena, their 114-year-old public golf course had its clubhouse and maintenance buildings burned in the fire. Then, in a devastating development for golfers, the Environmental Protection Agency identified the course as a dumping ground for toxic materials from the fire cleanup in the surrounding area. That work, which wrapped up in late summer, badly scarred the course, which must now be renovated with funding, in the millions, by the County of Los Angeles Parks and Recreation Department.
There is no timetable for the work, but Parks and Rec director Norma García-González guaranteed the job will be done and a jewel in the community restored. “The surrounding community is very supportive of us rebuilding that golf course, and we want to make sure that we deliver,” she said.
Meanwhile, Riviera is set not only to host the Genesis Invitational again in February but the U.S. Women’s Open in June. —Tod Leonard
No. 15: Angel Cabrera
A guy who swung nothing but a broom for 30 months won two major championships on the PGA Tour Champions in 2025. No one is going to argue that Angel Cabrera deserves an award (but he might get one anyway) or even a pat on the back, but you can’t deny that the stocky Argentina native had a remarkable season in senior golf.
Cabrera enjoyed a comeback, but the accomplishment is colored by the reason for his extended absence from golf. The 55-year-old, nicknamed “El Pato” (the Duck), spent 30 months with that broom while incarcerated in his native country for domestic abuse, threats and harassment of two ex-girlfriends. He was paroled in August 2023 and played a limited schedule in 2024.
Spending more time with clubs than cleaning instruments, Cabrera was a different player this year, winning three times overall, including consecutive majors in the span of six days at the Regions Tradition and the Senior PGA Championship.
Winner of the 2007 U.S. Open and 2009 Masters (he returned to Augusta National and played for the first time 2019), Cabrera admitted after his one-stroke win over Jerry Kelly May 19 at the weather-delayed Tradition that he was surprised he had regained his winning form so quickly. The normally stoic Cabrera bared his feelings after edging Padraig Harrington and Thomas Bjorn by a shot at the 85th Senior PGA Championship at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md.
“I feel very emotional,” he said. “Maybe you cannot see but I'm very, very emotional inside, especially after all the things that I went through. I can't believe that I made it, but I'm here and very happy of myself.” —D.S.
No. 16: Rising TV ratings
Television ratings for the PGA Tour were not good in 2024. Declining. Concerning. Downright bad. So they only had one way to go for 2025, right?
Right.
Even so, the steady rise in the ratings over the course of the summer was taken as a sign that perhaps the tour had weathered the LIV Golf storm. In the aggregate, weekend viewership increased 22 percent over 2024, a jump of more than 1.859 million viewers. For reference, final-round telecasts in 2024 dropped 19 percent over 2023.
According to Nielsen figures, NBC’s weekend numbers increased by 18 percent, Golf Channel’s early-round coverage was up only 1 percent and CBS’ weekend coverage increased 21 percent over 2024. CBS aired six signature events, which averaged more than 2.7 million viewers for the final rounds. For the FedEx Cup Playoffs, NBC says it was its most-watched postseason in five years.
Having a career Grand Slam winner in Rory McIlroy and a dominant Scottie Scheffler, who backed up a terrific 2024 campaign with another that included two major victories, certainly did not hurt the overall cause. (FYI: McIlroy helped bring in 12.4 million final-round Masters viewers, 33 percent more than 2024 and the most since 2018.)
What TV ratings even mean in this era of streaming, however, leaves questions even if the trends of 2025 left smiles on PGA Tour and network execs. A new metric is emerging, called “Big Data,” to measure viewing habits and it’s expected to be more accurate than previous methods. It’ll also likely push the tour’s viewership higher in 2026 unless Scheffler and McIlroy go MIA.
The increase in numbers, however, did not translate to LIV Golf’s television product, which averaged just 338,000 viewers in 17 telecasts on Fox. Get rid of the three international events that aired on the network—because air times were not ideal for a U.S. audience—and the league averaged only 344,000 viewers.
The clearest look at the numbers came back in April when the PGA Tour and LIV Golf went head-to-head. During a 45-minute stretch from 5:15-6 p.m., 3.4 million viewers tuned in to watch Brian Harman win the Valero Texas Open on NBC, while 570,000 viewers tuned in on Fox during a similar timeframe to watch Marc Leishman win the LIV Golf event at Doral. —J.C.
No. 17: Cypress Point hosts 50th Walker Cup
Never mind golf courses, there are few more stunning plots of land on Earth than where the waves from the blue-green waters of the Pacific Ocean pound the jagged coastline on the Monterey Peninsula. Throw in massive inland sand dunes, and the jaw-dropping scenery stirred Dr. Alister Mackenzie to produce an unmatched design in the founding of the Cypress Point Club in 1928.
Three years short of its 100th birthday, the iconic course was an inspired choice for another historic occasion. The USGA picked CPC for the 50th edition of the Walker Cup Match in 2025, and the biggest question ahead of arguably the most anticipated edition of the Cup on this side of the Atlantic was: Can the play possibly match the setting?
When the competition was over on an early September Sunday evening, the unequivocable answer was yes.
The United States featured six of the top 10 players in the World Amateur Golf Rankings, but Great Britain and Ireland’s crew of mostly players from American colleges battled its way to a one-point deficit heading into Sunday’s singles matches. The stage was set for a potentially epic ending, but it was then, as was the case at St. Andrews’ Old Course in the 2023 match, that the U.S. wrested full control by winning 7½ points in the first eight matches. In the end, GB&I’s chances dissolved in the gathering fog, eventually falling to the Americans, 17-9.
“I'm just blown away,” said three-time participant but first-time U.S. captain Nathan Smith. “They showed up all weekend … and I don't know if I've ever seen a Walker Cup team bring it like they did this afternoon in singles.”
The opportunity to simply walk the grounds of the highly exclusive CPC—which hadn’t hosted anything other than exhibitions and college tournaments since its final year in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am rotation in 1990—created a high demand for tickets, with the few that were available to the public put into a lottery. Under mostly sunny skies with light winds, Cypress Point did not disappoint, with fans clamoring up and down the dunes and huddling tightly around the 15th and 16th tees for some of the most incredible views in golf.
In the competition, two distinct stories emerged on the American side: The continued rise of Auburn star Jackson Koivun (see Newsmaker No. 21), who secured the most points for the U.S. with three, and the emergence of 18-year-old Georgia high schooler Mason Howell, who was only lightly on Smith’s radar until Howell won the U.S. Amateur at The Olympic Club.
Howell hardly blinked in the Walker Cup’s white-hot spotlight. He was the only American to go undefeated (2-0-1) and got the festivities off to a banging start when he made an albatross with a 6-iron on a par-5 in a practice round. In Sunday’s morning foursomes, Howell holed out a wedge at the 17th for a walk-off eagle. In between, the University of Georgia commit showed as much skill and poise as any player on either side.
After five straight wins since 2017, the U.S. will only have a year to hold the trophy before defending it again in 2026, the USGA and R&A deciding to switch the competition to even years to avoid a Ryder Cup conflict. Smith will back again as the American captain as will GB&I skipper Dean Robertson, looking to avenge the Cypress loss at another iconic venue—Lahinch in Ireland. —T.L.
No. 18: Donald Trump
After losing his grip on the professional game, President Trump’s return to the White House in 2025 brought him back in golf’s inner sanctum.
A decade prior Trump had become of one American golf’s celebrities. He invested in the sport when other businessmen walked away during the onslaught of the financial crisis, and was an advocate of PGA Tour and LPGA events. His New Jersey property was set to host the 2017 U.S. Women’s Open and the 2022 PGA Championship, and he had acquiring Turnberry Resort, whose hosting duties of the 2020 Open seemed like a formality. Yet during his candidacy and first term as president, the sport distanced itself from Trump, most notably:
• The PGA Tour taking Doral off the schedule, instead playing the event in Mexico
• The R&A taking Turnberry out of the rota (stating it wouldn’t return until the focus would be on the championship, not the course’s owner)
• The PGA of America moving the 2022 PGA following the attack on the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021
However, Saudi Arabia made a calculation no one in the sport would, bringing Trump into the fold of the fledgling LIV Golf League in 2022 with his venues hosting multiple events. When Trump won the election in 2024—and with the PGA Tour and Saudi PIF no closer to a deal to unify golf—Trump suddenly was viewed as a Saudi conduit by the tour. That was underlined in multiple visits by tour leadership to the White House, including at a summit in February that was expected to bring men’s professional golf officially back together. But deal never came to fruition, the two sides remain far apart, although Trump’s Department of Justice pulled the reins back on the antitrust investigation into the tour that was started under the Biden Administration.
Despite no deal, Trump emerged as a victor. The PGA Tour is not just returning to Doral next year but awarded the venue a signature event. The DP World Tour also brought a Trump property onto its schedule in 2025, and following reports that the president continues to ask United Kingdom leadership about Turnberry, the R&A seemed to slightly open the door about the championship visiting; new CEO Mark Darbon mentioned this summer that logistical challenges remained but that the course was not off the rota. If there is a future deal to be had between the tour and PIF, it will ultimately have to go through Trump. The outcast has become golf’s chief powerbroker. —J.B.
No. 19: 29 LPGA Tour winners (but none named Nelly)
The LPGA Tour celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2025, and it was looking to make a big splash to honor its rich history and golfers. Few could have predicted the impact of the interesting season that had a record 29 different winners in 31 events. And, shockingly, none was named Nelly Korda.
It was as though Oprah Winfrey was at every Sunday finale saying, “You get a win!” and “You get a win!” and so on and so on. From A Lim Kim’s victory at the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions in the first tournament to World No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul winning at the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship, parity was the tour’s biggest storyline.
One of new commissioner Craig Kessler’s pillars is to significantly improve the tour’s storytelling and marketing of their most important assets, and there were plenty of opportunities for that. The first nine months of the season had 27 straight unique winners before Thitikul ended the incredible streak when she won the Buick LPGA Shanghai in October after getting her first victory in May’s Mizuho Americas Open. Then, Rookie of the Year Miyu Yamashita won the Maybank Championship after capturing the first major of the year at the Chevron Championship.
Still, there were opportunities to showcase players hoisting trophies and champagne spraying, from veterans to rookies. Just not Korda, who fell to No. 2 in the world and didn’t win a tournament after winning seven the previous year. Mind you, the 27-year-old had a statistically great season, not all that different really from 2024, and was second in scoring average at 69.44. She had two second-place finishes, nine top-10s and made the cut in all 19 starts.
“It’s definitely been an interesting year,” Korda said at the Tour Championship, less than two weeks before announcing that she was engaged to boyfriend Casey Gunderson. “There’s been good, there’s been flashes of really good, there’s flashes of ‘I don’t know what just happened.’ But I would say, overall, that’s just kind of golf. Coming off of last year, it’s kind of always going to be difficult to back that up.” —J.P.L.
No. 20: Temper tantrums
Pro golfers were not always on their best behavior in 2025. Rory McIlroy threw a club and smashed a tee marker at Oakmont on his way to just making the U.S. Open cut. Shane Lowry slammed his club into a divot after not getting relief and flashed the middle finger at his golf ball at the PGA Championship. And Tyrrell Hatton, well, continued to do Tyrrell Hatton things.
But no one drew more attention for their temper tantrums than Wyndham Clark. The 2023 U.S. Open champ tossed his driver and damaged a T-Mobile sign at the PGA Championship—a fit of rage that had a marshal “scared to death.”
Then there was the outburst that people didn’t see at the U.S. Open—until a photo of damage done to Oakmont’s historic locker room got out. Upset over missing the cut, Clark took some cuts at several lockers.
He apologized for his actions the next week at the Travelers Championship, but that didn’t keep Oakmont from suspending the 31-year-old. "Reinstatement would be contingent upon Mr. Clark fulfilling a number of specific conditions, including full repayment for damages, a meaningful contribution to a charity of the Board's choosing, and the successful completion of counseling and/or anger management sessions,” Oakmont president John Lynch wrote in a letter to members.
Oakmont is set to next host the U.S. Open in 2033 so Clark has plenty of time to make things right. —A.M.
No. 21: Amateurs playing like pros
The definition of an “amateur” golfer in 2025 is vastly different than it was just a few years ago. Where trading off your “golf skill or reputation” for financial reward had long been prohibited, anyone now can make a buck from their name, image and likeness. Some call it progress, others madness. There remains a red line, however, for those who play with a little “a” next to their names in that they still can’t take home prize money when playing in a professional event, a Rubicon that Jackson Koivun and Lottie Woad, the No. 1 ranked male and female amateurs in the world, stumbled upon during the summer.
While making the cut in six of seven PGA Tour starts—finishing T-11, T-6, T-5 and T-4 in his four last appearances—Koivun had to turn down close to $1 million in earnings. To say the 20-year-old Auburn undergraduate didn’t profit from the experience isn’t entirely accurate; the performances along with his college/amateur accolades—including a spot on the victorious U.S. Walker Cup team—earned him a PGA Tour card through the PGA Tour U.’s Accelerated Program the day he finally decides he’s turning pro.
Similarly, Woad had to pass on roughly $600,000 in paydays for a T-3 at the Amundi Evian Championship and a win at the Irish Open on the Ladies European Tour before decided it was too much. The week after turning pro in July, the 21-year-old from England won the ISPS Handa Women’s Scottish Open, then registered a T-8 finish at the AIG Women’s British Open. By year’s end, the former Augusta National Women’s Amateur champ had performed well enough to qualify for the CME Group Tour Championship and finish the season with $831,400 in earnings.
In tandem, Koivun and Woad sparked a renewed debate surrounding whether amateurs should get to keep the prize money they would have made in pro events. Proponents say they already get paid for wearing logos and appearing in commercials; why not get a check if they’ve played well over 72 holes? Critics ask what exactly would being an amateur golfer mean if it were allowed. Once again, some call it progress, others madness. —R.H.
No. 22: "Happy Gilmore 2"
When “Happy Gilmore” hit theaters in 1996, the movie had modest box-office success but quickly developed a cult following. There were no Oscars, but it did win the pivotal MTV Movie Award for Best Fight (shoutout to Bob Barker).
Nearly three decades later, loyal fans got the sequel they so desperately craved. And while this time around, there was no theatrical release, “Happy Gilmore 2”—starring nearly every golfer in the known universe—immediately turned into a Netflix behemoth, ultimately setting a record on Nielsen’s streaming charts for its premiere weekend. Over three days, 2.89 billion minutes viewed is what we in the media world call … a lot of minutes.
Blanketed by dozens of tour pro cameos (including the likes of Lee Trevino and Nancy Lopez, Adam Sandler’s titular character returned, along with his rival, Christopher McDonald’s Shooter McGavin, and that run-and-gun swing we’ve all tried (and failed) to replicate at the driving range that has become part of golf canon. We’re not really sure if you can call this a spoiler alert, but we can all agree that the sequel doesn’t match the storytelling magic and ridiculous “heights” of the original. Still, it’s inarguable that HG2 briefly took over golf’s consciousness, marrying itself with the PGA Tour, satirizing LIV Golf, launching John Daly’s acting career and throwing Scottie Scheffler behind bars (once again). Everyone you know watched it—or at least logged in a few minutes on Netflix. It performed so well, re-entering the culture in such an impressive way, that our own editorial director had to dole out a mea culpa for his prediction that it would flop.
Golf is as “cool” as it’s ever been—admittedly a low bar—but the success of “Happy Gilmore 2” feels like proof that the sport is worldwide in a brand new way. COVID brought in a large number of players who never would’ve tried it out, pro golf is handing out millions of dollars and Zapruder Film-ing cheating scandals are all the rage on YouTube. Plus, golf influencer-ing has never been more in. (What a sentence that is.) Still, most importantly, people really, really, really love Adam Sandler. As they should. Has there ever been a more menschy mensch? —Greg Gottfried
No. 23: Picking up the pace (of play)
Can a topic land a place on our Newsmakers countdown because it's less of a story than in years past? Here at No. 23, "pace of play" proves the answer is an emphatic yes. One of the major hot-button issues in professional golf seemingly forever has been glacially slow rounds on the PGA and LPGA Tour. In March, PGA Tour executives laid out for Golf Digest exactly what they're doing about it, and the solutions were manifold. More importantly, they came with an admission that it was a real problem, and that it was getting worse.
In fact, things seemed to reach a low point in January, when Dottie Pepper called out the slow play on CBS at the Farmers Insurance Open. But it seemed even by March, at the Players Championship, that the cavalry was coming. The main weapon will take effect in 2026—smaller fields. Gone are 156-player tee sheets that lead to inevitable pile-ups when players make the turn, rounds not being completed until the following morning and leading to logistical nightmares.
Additionally, the PGA Tour commissioned a speed-of-play working group that hatched ideas like publishing individual player times (TBD if that sees the light of day), testing out rangefinders on the Korn Ferry Tour (it saves time and will be allowed in 2026), giving harsher penalties for time violations and quicker rulings by officials facilitated by video review. In June, pace of play had improved by five minutes on the PGA Tour, and it's going to get even better next year. The same is true on the LPGA Tour, which incorporated a series of harsher penalties for slow play in March and has since seen results. Credit where it's due—real progress has been made here, and if we're lucky, "pace of play" won't even make the top 25 next year. —S.R.
No. 24: Player-Caddie Breakups
The prominent player-caddie breakup is nothing new in professional golf. But shocking, lead-headline-worthy splits seemed to be more prevalent than ever in 2025. The Phil and Bones “amicable” parting of ways may have happened in 2017, but it continues to serve as proof, eight years later, that even the most ironclad of partnerships must end.
The first domino fell after the Players Championship, where Matt Fitzpatrick had missed another cut during a poor stretch that saw him fall to 69th in the Official World Golf Ranking, his lowest mark since 2015. Billy Foster, who was on Fitzpatrick’s bag for six years including his U.S. Open win at Brookline in 2022, took to social media the day after to reveal that he and Fitzy were calling it quits. Just a few weeks later, another top player in the throes of a wicked slump, Max Homa, showed up to the Valero Texas Open with a different caddie in place of longtime looper and childhood friend Joe Greiner. It was soon revealed that it was Greiner who made the call, ending a decade-plus long alliance.
Greiner had a short stint on Justin Thomas’ bag before hopping over to the bag of Collin Morikawa, who broke up with his first and only caddie as a pro, JJ Jakovac, after five years. Morikawa then began a caddie carousel that rivaled the college football coaching cycle, ditching Greiner after just five events and trying out an old college teammate KK Limbhasut as well as Fitzpatrick’s ex Foster. When the FedEx Cup Playoffs began, Morikawa was on his fifth different caddie, Mark Urbanek, who split up with Tony Finau after the Open Championship.
Perhaps no breakup tugged at the heartstrings quite like the separation of Joel Dahmen and Geno Bonnalie, whose brother-like relationship was the subject of an entire episode in Season 1 of Netflix’s “Full Swing.” Fortunately, Dahmen stated that they were still “the best of friends” on his X account, but it did serve as yet another example of the extremely fickle nature of the job of bagman. Please, golf gods, don’t take Jordan Spieth and Michael Greller from us next. —C.P.
No. 25: Tiger Woods
Sadly, it was another lost season on the golf course for the 15-time major champ, who spent more time in 2025 following his 16-year-old son Charlie in junior tournaments than walking inside the ropes himself. Tiger began the year optimistically while competing for Jupiter Links Golf Club in the new TGL (of which he’s a co-founder), but his two most memorable moments from SoFi Center were anything but breathtaking shots. Instead, it was him cracking up at a shank by teammate Kevin Kisner and a blooper of his own creation when he mistakenly hit the wrong club to come up well short on an approach.
Even so, seeing Tiger “playing” golf was exciting—he hadn’t competed in an official tournament since the 2024 Open—as those viral moments showed the sway Woods still has with golf fans. They would be saddened to learn, then, that Woods had suffered yet another injury/surgery in March (torn Achilles) that ultimately knocked him out of the entire PGA Tour and major championship season. (Although, he still made news at the Masters when Augusta National announced Woods will design a short course at Augusta Municipal Golf Course.)
Woods’ personal life kept him in the headlines as well, first for the death of his mother, Tida, in February. On a lighter note, the 82-time PGA Tour winner announced on Instagram in March that he was in a relationship with Vanessa Trump, the ex-wife of Donald Trump Jr. "Love is in the air and life is better with you by my side!" Woods captioned.
His fans would say life is better when Tiger is competing, but Woods, who had disc replacement surgery in October, had no timetable for a return when he hosted the Hero World Challenge in December. And with Woods turning 50(!) at the end of the year, the next time he tees it up could be at a PGA Tour Champions event. —A.M.
