Five Pro Golf Predictions for ‘25

If the last four years in golf have taught us anything, it’s to avoid predictions entirely. This player’s going to LIV. Then he isn’t. Scottie’s going to win every major. Then comes Xander. Forecasting a sport where the best player in history wins 20 percent of the time is entirely a fool’s errand.

But this is the internet, where fool’s errands are not just tolerated but often encouraged. With that, let’s take a look at 2025 and make five bold-ish predictions for how things will shake out in the year ahead.

All 12 Americans on the Ryder Cup team will donate their $200,000 stipend to charity/grassroots organizations.

This has already been a massive story, and the competition is still nine months away. A few weeks ago the long-rumored payout became official: the 12 Americans who qualify for the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black will receive $300,000 to donate to a charity of their choice...in addition to—and this is the spicy part—a $200,000 “stipend” for the week. The statement released by the PGA of America announcing the decision was carefully worded. It insisted that no players outright asked to be paid, and “stipend” does suggest the money could be used toward expenses. I understand what they were trying to do there. They didn’t want to throw players under the bus, but I can guarantee you the PGA of America isn’t handing out the money out of the goodness of their heart. It’s entirely true no American player went explicit with their quest, but their representatives? Surely these guys could have sent the message without saying the actual words “pay me.”

The ambiguity with the stipend leads to a natural question that’ll be asked to all 12 players: What are you going to do with the $200,000? It’s not a fun question to answer. And given the Europeans clear-cut response to this—we won’t be paid, and we don’t want to be paid—what a powerful rallying cry they now have. Something along the lines of: we’re playing for money, they’re playing for passion. Merits aside—and there is some in the argument that talent should be paid—it’s just a really bad look for the U.S. side.

Is all this trouble worth $200,000, roughly the equivalent of a 20th-place finish in a signature event? It is not. Captain Keegan Bradley knows this, and the players aren’t stupid. I’d expect all 12 to donate their stipends to charities or grassroots golf organizations and put this controversy to bed.

A LIV player will tee it up in a PGA TOUR event

I know, I know. You’re tired of hearing about how close a deal is between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund. We’re closing in on 18 months since Jay Monahan and Yasir al-Rumayyan announced their detente on CNBC and still that Framework Agreement has not been formalized. But all the chatter around the golf world is that the deal is essentially finished. I don’t expect any announcements before Donald Trump takes office on January 20, but I’d expect one shortly thereafter.

Now, will that agreement spell the end of LIV Golf? No sir. It will merely start the process of reunification of the professional game—and a vital step toward that goal is ending the bans. Two tours can exist at the same time. They always have. The difference in these last few years are the walls up between those tours. It will take a while to figure out how guys who have lost their status can regain it, whether that’s going back to Q-School or paying some sort of fine. But there are a few players who would still have PGA Tour status if the bans were rescinded: lifetime members Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, and recent major winners like Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith and Brooks Koepka. Those are, of course, the LIV players that the PGA Tour misses the most—the guys who would immediately add juice to events. Here’s to hoping 2025 is the year we see those names compete against Rory and Scottie and Xander more than just four times. We’re inching toward that moment. You can feel it. LIV Golf has a new CEO and the PGA Tour is looking for one, too. Events like the recent Showdown show the players themselves want to move past this painful chapter in the sport.

I’m optimistic.

Tom Kim will win his first major championship

I think we forget how young this guy is: He doesn’t turn 23 until the week of the U.S. Open. Had he grown up in the U.S., he might be a college senior. He’s roughly 2.5 years younger than Ludvig Aberg and already a three-time winner on the PGA Tour. I’m buying all the Tom Kim stock you’ll sell me. I love how feisty he gets in contention. As we’ve seen in each of the last two Presidents Cups, he fears no one and leans into those pressure-packed moments. That’s a rare quality in this sport.

Kim actually struggled throughout the first half of 2024 before jump-starting the back end of his season with that runner-up finish to Scottie Scheffler in an epic duel at the Travelers. He finished the year with solo seconds in two of his last three events. He’s continuing to get stronger and longer off the tee and I suspect that’ll continue working with Chris Como, the instructor that helped Xander Schauffele pick up some extra miles per hour and become one of the best drivers in the game. There’s huge room for improvement in that department—he was 111th on tour in strokes gained off the tee last season—and that’s exciting.

He’ll win his first major in 2025 and reach a new level of stardom.

Scottie Scheffler will win 5+ times again, remain No. 1 all year

There’s a famous story about David Duval. After winning the Open Championship, his lone major, and reaching world No. 1, he had a moment on the plane ride home where he thought to himself: Is this it? Is this the pinnacle? Where do I go from here?

There’s a certain heaviness to being the consensus best player in the world. Expectations. Everyone wants a piece of your time. Scheffler’s now held that mantle for well over a year…but he seems totally and completely unfazed by it all. When he says golf is a piece of his life but not his entire life, you believe him. His faith and family life provide him with—all together now—a perspective that allows him to leave his work at the golf course. He’s got one of those homemade swings that always seem to stand the test of time, and he and his coach Randy Smith have been working on the same things for years and years.

I don’t see any reason this incredible run won’t continue, particularly if he continues to look so comfortable with his new claw putting grip. He’s won all these tournaments—seven this year, or eight if you count the Olympics, or nine if you count the verkalkte Tour Championship/FedEx Cup net-tournament deal—with pretty mediocre putting. That’s scary, because elite ball striking is far more repeatable on a weekly basis than relying on a hot putter. It just feels very sustainable. He’s already been the world No. 1 for more than 80 consecutive weeks. Once that streak reaches 97 weeks, and it will, he’ll pass Greg Norman and only Tiger will have been No. 1 for a longer consecutive period. He’s got a long way to go to catch TW—he’s got a 264-week stretch and a 281-week stretch—but I think he wins at least five times and remains No. 1 throughout the entirety of 2025. He’s got a big lead, and the gap between him and everyone else seems to be getting wider, not narrower.

A physical altercation will break out at Bethpage Black

We’ve had this Ryder Cup circled since the minute it was announced. Golf’s most passionate event in front of perhaps the country’s most passionate—and often irreverent—fans. There’s already a ton bubbling leading up to Bethpage and we’re still nine months out. The ticket pricing controversy. The pay-for-play controversy. It just feels like a cauldron of emotion, mixing the New York sports fans with national pride with a fiery captain like Keegan Bradley with a sport that asks for silence while someone’s hitting. All it takes is one asshole to scream at the wrong time, or scream something that crosses a line, and things could get ugly.

If I sound concerned, I’m not. I’m actually excited for the chaos. It’s one week every two years. We can handle a little spice. A little altercation between, say, a fan and a caddie for the European team—that’ll only add to the competition. So long as no one gets hurt, bring it on. I do think the reaction from a lot of media, however, will be alarmist. This has gone too far. This isn’t in the spirit of the game. Meh. To steal a line from Bob Dylan (I just saw A Complete Unknown, so it’s stuck in my head): the times, they are a-changin’.