The PGA Tour season begins Thursday at The Sentry in Hawaii, with many of the top players in the world — but not an injured Scottie Scheffler — playing the obscenely hilly Plantation Course at Kapalua. So let’s have some fun. Here’s what will happen in golf in 2025.
Jon Rahm wins a major: There’s a middle ground between “Yeah, Rahm didn’t emotionally handle the criticism from his LIV departure well,” and “Rahm is still one of the three or four best golfers in the world.”
He had a strange, frustrating major campaign. That included missing Pinehurst with a foot infection. But take a look at the whole year. You’re welcome to downplay LIV results, but at some point, you’re just playing golf. Ten top fives. He should have won an Olympic gold medal but gave it away. He’s still Jon Rahm. He’s just getting over the change from being loved to being criticized.
Scottie Scheffler remains the best golfer, but the honeymoon ends: People are going to start getting irrational. He’s going to remain the clear best player. He’ll rack up top fives and top 10s and win multiple tournaments. He might even win a major!
But it’s going to be the year the masses start forgetting that nobody wins at Tiger Woods levels in this era, and they might never again. It will become, “Oh, Scottie, why aren’t you winning more majors?” … “Oh, Scottie, is your hand bothering you?” … “What’s up with the putting?” each time he finishes third instead of winning. Because that’s his standard now. The discourse will take the horrible transition from the coronation of 2024 to the unfair new expectations of 2025.
A repeat strange run of early winners: Last year, the entire start of the year was filled with journeyman winners or super-young surprises. This year will be the same.
Everything for the top stars will be about easing into form for the majors, and you’ll see tournaments like the Sony, the American Express, Torrey Pines and others won by cool rising studs like Max Greyserman or grinders like Denny McCarthy, and we’ll have the same conversation we had in March before all the top stars went on runs.
A PGA Tour-LIV deal will still not be finalized: But! Reports of an agreement will come out early in 2025. We just won’t get any details or real information until it goes through government approval, which will drag on until 2026.
Viktor Hovland will work with many more coaches: At the time this was typed, Hovland told a European outlet he is no longer working with coach Joe Mayo. After the wild 2024 season of Hovland working with four different instructors (that we know of), he’ll have another bizarre year of tinkering and trying to have the perfect season. It will be a better year than 2024, but still not near what we hoped in fall 2023 when he looked like the best player in the year.
Justin Thomas will have a big year: (We talked about this already).
Jordan Spieth will not: Wrist injuries are tough!
The Waste Management Open will be much less chaotic: It jumped the shark last year, and now tournament organizers know they have to rein it in or players will stop wanting to come.
The Ryder Cup will be more chaotic than ever: After hat-gate. After LIV drama. After events like the Waste Management and the general American golf social media culture only make the heckling, bro-ey, debaucherous fan experience seem like something to strive for to large chunks of the population — on top of the very real conversation already happening about the New York crowds at Bethpage being unruly — and the U.S. fans will play up to the fears. They’ll treat it as a challenge, and it will lead to a chaotic Ryder Cup week that goes perhaps too far. Something bad might happen.
A Højgaard will win a PGA Tour event: But not the one you think.
Bryson DeChambeau won’t have quite the same major success: DeChambeau as a top-10 golfer is here to stay. But there is a gap between DeChambeau’s returning to form and the discussion that he’s in the same conversation as Scheffler, Xander Schauffele or Rory McIlroy. He’s not quite in that group, and he won’t have a major top five.
Collin Morikawa again takes his place in golf’s top tier: Morikawa was the best golfer nobody talked about last year. He had 14 top 20s and seven top fives. He played in the final Sunday group at the Masters and the PGA Championship. He finished second behind Scheffler at the Tour Championship. He was as steady as anyone not named Scheffler or Schauffele. But he didn’t win once, and those Sunday struggles at Augusta and Valhalla were concerning.
But in 2025, Morikawa will win more tournaments than Schauffele or McIlroy. There’s always a mini-pantheon at the top of golf each year. In 2023, it was Rahm, Scheffler, McIlroy and Hovland. In 2024, it was Scheffler, Schauffele, McIlroy and arguably DeChambeau. In 2025, it will be Scheffler, Rahm, Schauffele and Morikawa. The question is, will Morikawa win a major?
Scottie Scheffler, left, winner of the 2024 Masters Tournament, sits with Jon Rahm at the Green Jacket Ceremony. (Warren Little / Getty Images)
Xander Schauffele wins the green jacket: This is the only specific prediction we’ll make. It’s golf. Predicting specific tournaments is nonsense. But Schauffele is suddenly a guy you know you have to fear in majors, and Augusta is the one major he plays best at. He’s gone T2, T3, 8, T10. And now he knows how to win. Schauffele wins a competitive Masters, and suddenly people will be recontextualizing his going from no majors to three in four starts. (Then, he won’t win again for a bit.)
Sam Burns plays in two major final Sunday pairings: He doesn’t win.
Quail Hollow will strangely deliver: Quail Hollow has become one of the more dunked-on big courses in the U.S., which will only increase at this year’s PGA Championship. The reason is probably just overexposure. It has an annual PGA Tour event. It hosted the 2022 Presidents Cup. And a lot of golf nerds just don’t like it. But it tends to create great winners and good golf tournaments, and Quail will give us a strangely riveting PGA that leads to some referendums on what we use to determine “good” professional courses.
Much will be written about Oakmont returning us to above-par U.S. Opens: It will not. That is just not how the USGA seems to set up the U.S. Opens anymore. Somebody will win at 8-under. The majority of the field will be above par, and it will be an incredible Open, playing with the perfect mix of risk and reward, but most of the contenders actually shoot below par most days.
Rory McIlroy does not win a major: I’m sorry. Pinehurst pushed me too far. I cannot predict it until it happens.
Brooks Koepka and Jordan Spieth will be left off the Ryder Cup team: Neither will play well enough to truly be in contention at all, leaving captain Keegan Bradley’s hands tied.
Aaron Rai makes the Ryder Cup team: There’s always one or two “Huh, really?” golfers on the European team, and this year it will be an Englishman who can play some of the hottest rounds on tour. He’s an exceptional ball striker and has been around for a long time. He’ll be this year’s version of Russell Henley on the U.S. Presidents Cup team. Speaking of …
Russell Henley remains the Scheffler partner: Henley and Scheffler were a surprisingly perfect pairing at Royal Montreal, and Bradley was on the team to see it up close. He sticks with it, and they still thrive.
Keegan Bradley will play well enough to earn a captain’s pick, but he won’t do it: Chaos prediction! Bradley will end the year as one of the seven to 12 best American players and put himself in a position to easily make the team most years, but he’ll be so focused on not being the guy who picked himself he will leave himself off. And the man he does pick instead will end up being what costs the U.S. Bradley’s selflessness will be his most criticized choice.
That’s right. The U.S. loses on home soil: After the last few years when the golf world has seemed to conclude the Ryder Cup is broken because nobody can ever win overseas anymore, the Europeans will knock off a messy U.S. team at Bethpage.
The world will melt down.
(Top photo of Collin Morikawa, right, with Patrick Cantlay: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6030593/2025/01/01/22-predictions-2025-mens-golf-season/
