by Welcome to the first edition of a weekly column I’ll be writing each Wednesday during the golf season! Any name suggestions?
Future editions will be formatted a little bit differently with a mix of player and course analysis, stats, and responses to reader questions. For today, let’s dive into some predictions and light commentary on 10 of the top men’s professional golfers as we head into the 2025 season. Feel free to check back in a year to let me know which predictions I got right – and let’s agree to ignore the ones I miss. Capisce?
Scottie Scheffler
It would be irresponsible to kick off this list with anybody but Scottie Scheffler. The world’s top-ranked player won nine times in 2024, including a Masters, a Players, and the Olympic gold medal. Comparisons to Tiger Woods are officially justifiable – Scottie’s past two seasons represent the most dominant stretch of golf we’ve seen from a player since Tiger. He is indisputably the best iron player in the world, leading the PGA Tour in Strokes Gained: Approach in each of the past two seasons. His short game is world-class, and he hits the ball dead straight on a rope just about every time he tees it up.
Scottie’s ballstriking paired with his discipline and ability to close golf tournaments is unrivaled among his peers. And his recent hand injury doesn’t seem like a significant long-term concern. Should Scottie’s 2025 come anywhere close to what we witnessed in 2024, we’re looking at a player with serious potential to be considered an all-time great.
Ludvig Aberg
When you predict a golfer to take a big leap forward, you’ll be wrong more often than you’re right. I don’t care. I’m predicting a monster year in 2025 for Ludvig Aberg. The 25-year-old’s early career path is as impressive as just about any active player’s.
Aberg turned professional in the summer of 2023 and wasted no time, winning two professional events by the end of the calendar year. In 2024, Aberg finished second at the Masters in his major championship debut, three shots ahead of third place. Scheffler ultimately won the tournament in dominant fashion, but Aberg had a legitimate chance of winning a green jacket in his first attempt.
The rest of Aberg’s 2024 was solid and consistent, especially from tee to green. He finished second at a storm-shortened AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, eighth at the Players Championship, T-5 at Memorial, and T-2 at the BMW Championship. Ludvig missed two cuts all year: on the number at the PGA Championship and at the Open Championship from the bad side of a significant wave split.
2023 was Aberg’s year to transition to professional golf, 2024 was for settling into his shoes and cutting his teeth in his first spin through each major championship, and 2025 is for solidifying his spot amongst the top golfers in the world.
I would not be surprised if, by this time next year, we’re discussing Aberg as the second-best player in the world.
Viktor Hovland
Since turning professional in 2019, Hovland has only had one stretch of his career where he wasn’t poor around the greens – between May 2023 and December 2023. After that stretch, Hovland’s around-the-green play took a nosedive. He finished 180th out of 184 qualified golfers in Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green in 2024, losing more than half a stroke per round to the field. Outside of a third-place finish on a soft Valhalla setup, Hovland missed the cut in each of the other three majors last year.
Viktor is a brilliant ballstriker and an above-average putter. Still, you cannot be one of the best players in the world with such a glaring weakness in the bag. Perhaps he will land on his feet and find answers after another recent breakup with coach Joe Mayo, but until further notice, Hovland is Just a Guy.
Collin Morikawa
Trivia time! How many golfers have more major championship wins than Collin Morikawa (2) since the start of 2020? That’s right, zero. Now how many golfers have as many top fives in major championships as Morikawa (7) over that span? Also zero. Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy each have six.
And yet, I doubt many people consider Morikawa a top-five player in the world. The 2024 year was Morikawa’s worst approach-play season on Tour, as he ranked outside the top five (42nd) for the first time in his PGA Tour career in Strokes Gained: Approach. Fortunately for Collin, modest improvement with the short game and putting bolstered his performance, and he posted solid results throughout 2024. Though Collin did not win a tournament last year, he earned the low gross 72-hole score at the Tour Championship and finished runner-up at the Memorial. He was also one of two golfers to finish top 20 in all four majors last year. The other was Xander Schauffele.
Entering 2025, there are plenty of reasons to believe a strong year could be on the way for Morikawa, one of golf’s preeminent ballstrikers.
Rory McIlroy
Brace yourselves, Rory fans. I have a painful stat to share with you. The table below shows the number of top fives and wins in major championships since 2020.
Now here is the same table expanded out to the beginning of the 2015 major championship season.
Rory continues to rack up top fives in majors at about as high of a frequency as anyone, yet he is the only player near the top of these lists without a major win over the last ten years. In fact, he’s the only player listed above without multiple major wins over each time period. It’s time to slam the door and win one.
The good news is that 2025 presents multiple prime opportunities for Rory to get the job done. His prospects of winning the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow will be one of the most discussed storylines of the year and for good reason. Quail Hollow is the site of Rory’s first PGA Tour win, and he’s won on three more occasions since then, most recently at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship. Quail is a bomber-friendly golf course that heavily rewards distance, a significant advantage for one of the longest drivers of the golf ball in the world. The ‘25 PGA might be the best opportunity for Rory to snag a major for the rest of his career.
Major championship quest aside, I’d like to see Rory shake up the world ranking. Isn’t he tired of hearing people talk about Scheffler as the undisputed top player in the world? Not many people would even consider Rory to be the second-best player in the world right now, let alone the best. Anything short of world No.1 should be below McIlroy’s standards. Surely he is motivated to get back on top soon.
Jon Rahm
Jon Rahm’s 2024 was a tale of two seasons. On the front half of the year, he transitioned to LIV Golf and helped his wife through what was reportedly a difficult pregnancy. He also battled a foot injury that prevented him from teeing it up at the U.S. Open. February through June didn’t yield the best results of Rahm’s career, but he finished the year looking like the Jon Rahm we’re accustomed to seeing at the top of leaderboards. He squeezed out a T-7 at Royal Troon despite a difficult tee time on the wrong side of the wave split, won twice on LIV, and held the Olympics in the palm of his hand entering the back nine on Sunday before squandering the lead. Add in three consecutive top 10s on the DP World Tour to round out the year, and I think it’s safe to say that Rahm has recovered his elite form.
Looking ahead to 2025, it’s success in major championships or bust. The two-time major winner should be measured to the standard of the best players in the world, and he needs to contend in multiple major championships and/or win one this year.
Should Rahm fade into the territory of being No. 5-10 in the world, it’d be a wildly disappointing development for one of golf’s biggest talents.
Jordan Spieth
Major championship results follow form. Up to this point in his career, Jordan Spieth has held a lead or co-lead after 54 holes in six major championships: 2014, 2015 (2), 2016, 2017, and 2018. Since the start of 2022, Spieth hasn’t been closer than within seven shots of a 54-hole lead at a major championship.
The bull case for Spieth is that, coming off a wrist surgery, he might be as healthy in 2025 as he’s been in a few years. However, my suspicion is that Spieth’s best days are well behind us, and I highly doubt we will talk about him as a top-10 player ever again. Jordan lost strokes to the field with his approach play last season, and his putting hasn’t been anywhere near his elite 2015-16 levels for quite some time. Given his propensity for the big miss off the tee, there’s too much Spieth has to fix to reclaim a spot amongst the best players in the world. However, if he can defy the odds and become a consistent force in major championships again, it would be one of the best stories in the sport.
Justin Thomas
Like a few other names on this list, Justin Thomas is at an inflection point in his career. Is he truly a great player? Or is he one of the many golfers who plays five or six years of elite golf before sputtering out?
In 2024, Thomas regained the iron play prowess that briefly escaped him during the 2023 season. He had five top 10s during the 2024 regular season, including a T-8 at the PGA Championship. At the same time, JT missed cuts at two of four majors and continues to be plagued by a bad putter, ranking 174th out of 184 qualified putters in Strokes Gained: Putting for the 2024 season at -0.48 strokes per round. Also, his T-8 at Valhalla last year is his only top 10 in a major championship in his last ten major starts.
I tend to believe that over a sustained period, JT’s ceiling is somewhere between the sixth and 10th best player in the world. The combination of consistent poor putting and a tendency to attempt too many crafty, unnecessary shots limits JT and prevents him from performing at the level required to compete with the uppermost echelon of the sport. Nonetheless, I’d be delighted to be wrong, as he’s one of the most skilled and electrifying golfers to watch flush an iron.
Xander Schauffele
If I were Xander Schauffele, I’d have at least the two following goals for 2025:
1. Win a major championship
2. Deliver three or more points for Team USA in the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black
Schauffele took the most impressive jump of any player last year, notching two major championship wins and 16 top-10 finishes in 22 starts. He is the clear-cut second-best player in the world and arguably the sport’s most well-rounded player. To give Team USA a strong chance at winning back the Ryder Cup on home soil, Schauffele needs to be a reliable performer for the Red, White, and Blue.
Sure, supplanting Scottie Scheffler as world No. 1 would be excellent, but if Schauffele could check off the two boxes above, it’d be another phenomenal year.
Bryson DeChambeau
Of every professional golfer in the world, I might have the least confidence about where Bryson DeChambeau stacks up. He could contend in two majors this year. He could also miss multiple cuts in the ‘25 major season without factoring in any of them.
The list of golfers who have won the NCAAs, a U.S. Amateur, and a U.S. Open is Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and Bryson DeChambeau. After his epic, clutch victory at Pinehurst last year, he’s now a two-time U.S. Open winner with a proven track record of winning golf tournaments at every level.
Counterpoint: I don’t trust Bryson at all on golf courses that heavily penalize errant tee shots, especially in windy conditions. Much like Rory, every Bryson driver swing at Augusta National invites danger if the ball veers too far off the playing corridors.
Is Bryson DeChambeau a top-five player in the world? No, I’m comfortable putting Scheffler, Schauffele, McIlroy, Rahm, and Aberg all comfortably ahead of Bryson, but there’s no denying DeChambeau’s upside and pedigree. With the 2025 Ryder Cup lurking on a golf course well suited to Bryson’s strengths, it’s a big year for the reigning U.S. Open champion to prove himself on golf’s biggest stages.
