The PGA Tour season doesn’t really start to heat up until early February. There are fall events and some early season January events that a lot of the journeymen play in to keep their Tour Cards and earn some points towards the FedEx Cup point standings. With all due respect to guys like Joel Dahmen and Denny McCarthy, the season just isn’t as interesting when they’re on top of leaderboards in the fall swing.
The Sentry Tournament usually happens the first weekend in January. It’s the first signature event of the season and it takes place in Kapalua, Hawaii. It’s the first real field of the season and kind of marks the true beginning of the PGA Tour season. Hideki Matsuyama, a former Masters champion, won that event this year.
Fast forward a few weeks to the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, another of the PGA Tour’s signature events. That one saw Rory McIlroy win his first of three tournaments already in just 2025 alone. He also won THE PLAYERS Championship - my personal favorite tournament of the year - and obviously, The Masters.
The Genesis Invitational was supposed to take place at Riviera Country Club as it does every year but due to the California wildfires, the tournament was moved to Torrey Pines where Ludvig Åberg, the sweet-swinging 25-year old, won his second career PGA Tour event. His future looks as bright as any of the young guys on Tour right now.
March rolled around and we got a few more big moments. Viktor Hovland and Justin Thomas, two players who have tons of accolades on Tour but hadn’t won for extended periods of time, battled it out down the stretch at The Valspar Championship with Hovland ultimately pulling out the win just days after saying that his swing was so broken that he had no clue where the ball was going.
Min Woo Lee, maybe the TOUR’s ultimate social media presence and a fan favorite, finally broke through and won a tournament out-dueling a few of the games’ best players to pull off the improbable victory.
Finally, three weeks into April, we’ve witnessed Brian Harman win a tournament, McIlory finally win The Masters, and Thomas tying a course-record on Thursday shooting 10-under par and jumpstarting his weekend to get out to his first win in over 1,000 days.
Nevermind that fact that 400 words into this column, number one ranked player in the world Scottie Scheffler’s name hadn’t even been mentioned.
I’d been golf conscious for Tiger Woods’ domination but also not old enough to truly appreciate it. I remember being shocked at the allegations against him and watched as he suffered through multiple back injuries only to come back and win the 2019 Masters. It was his 81st career TOUR win and 15th major championship. Tiger won the TOUR Championship later that year and now sits tied with Sam Snead for first at 82 wins all-time. That is domination we may never see again.
But there’s no denying that, in Tiger’s heyday, the competition wasn’t nearly as strong. Whether that is more of a testament to how good Tiger was or the era overall is up for your debate. But today, there are so many talented players on TOUR that there aren’t many weeks in the spring and summer schedule where a big name player isn’t at least in the running on Sunday, if not winning the tournament.
COVID-19 changed the world in a lot of ways. Golf was maybe one of the biggest boomers from the pandemic simply because it was one of the few activities we were allowed to enjoy during the pandemic and it was one of the first sports to return socially distanced and all. People had no choice but to turn to it. The game is undeniably stronger ever since.
Then there was the LIV Golf creation funded by Saudi Arabia that hasn’t been as popular as people may have wanted but boasts the likes of former major champions like Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Cameron Smith, and Dustin Johnson.
Then there is the YouTube aspect of golf. DeChambeau has embraced how popular YouTube golf has become and even recorded a video with the President of the United States. Think about that for a second. It’s crazy. There’s the “Good Good” guys and Grant Horvat and Bob Does Sports and all these guys (and girls) creating golf content on YouTube.
Football is always going to be king in the United States. LeBron James and Steph Curry are some of the most recognizable athletes on the planet because of their basketball accomplishments. Turn on a baseball game and you might see Shohei Ohtani throw seven shutout innings and also hit two home runs in the same game.
But if you turn on a golf tournament and you’ve never watched before, you can be captivated by moments such as McIlroy’s Masters chase or Thomas’ pouring of emotion after sinking a putt to win the tournament this weekend. Golf is captivating and maybe the hardest sport to master - no pun intended.
You watch some of these guys in a big green field full of sand and trees and water obstacles just to see them hit a small white ball at a flag in a hole that sits at 4.25 inches in diameter. There is quite literally no margin for error on a golf shot and these guys make it look easy.
If 2025 is your welcome to golf, then buckle up because you’re experiencing some of the best the sport has to offer. Whether that be on the PGA Tour, LIV Golf Tour or YouTube, 2025 is morphing into the year that golf really cemented itself among the other top sports in the country.
(photo courtesy of GolfPsych)