5 Wants, 9 Needs, and One Question for the 2025 Golf Season

It’s officially 2025, and we are officially past the necessary “happy new years” from random bartenders and incorrectly writing 2024 on everything. Golf has started, and with that, these are my hopes for a big year in a sport that really needs a big year.

I need Rory to win a major

I don’t care which one it is at this point. For years it was the Masters, but now any major championship will work for me. The last three years have produced so many close calls for the guy that going through this stretch without actually claiming one will feel like Greg Norman during his Augusta National era.

St. Andrews. LACC. Pinehurst. How does he not win one of those? It’s batty, like the Buffalo Bills making four straight Super Bowls and leaving empty-handed.

I honestly don’t know what has to happen for him to get it done at this point. He was in a perfect position at St. Andrews and got run down by one of the great back nine performances in major history. He played extremely safe golf in Los Angeles and lost to a guy that didn’t really do a lot on Sunday to pick up his first major championship. And then, well, the shorties at Pinehurst.

I think I’ve said this every year since 2018 and will continue to do so. Rory. A major. For the love of God, please!

Speaking of majors …

I want a career Grand Slam winner in 2025.

Is that too much to ask? The last time we had someone complete this on the men’s side we were still seven years away from the first iPhone. We’re talking about the original pleated khaki and over-the-elbow polo days. The crazy thing about this is how many guys we have that could, in theory, do it this season.

Here are the one-away candidates:

• Rory at the Masters

• Jordan Spieth at the PGA Championship

• Phil Mickelson at the U.S. Open (if he’s even in the field)

The two-away candidates aren’t out of the question either, in terms of who’s capable of winning a couple of majors in the same season and becoming a part of the most exclusive group in our sport.

Brooks Koepka would need a green jacket and a Claret Jug. Totally reasonable. Two seconds in his Masters career, three top-six finishes at the Open.

Xander Schauffele is a Masters and U.S. Open away from this feat. After his two-major win season of 2024, who’s to say he couldn’t do it again? Well, history for one, but let’s not dive into semantics…a guy winning the career Grand Slam in a two-year span would go down as one of the great runs in major championship history. Xander completely changed my mind last season with the way he played down the stretch at Valhalla and Troon, so if that guy shows up to Augusta and gets in the hunt, this isn’t totally out of the question.

Jon Rahm is a PGA and Open Championship away as well. Collin Morikawa needs a green jacket and a U.S. Open to complete the Slam and, well, Dustin Johnson is in this camp as well, at least technically (DJ hasn’t had a top-five in a major since his win at the November Masters in 2020).

I need Jason Day to wear a tank top during a round of professional golf.

I think we’re close; his relationship last year with Malbon was both a total departure from what we know as professional golf fits and, somehow, extremely successful. I want the man to lean deeper and deeper into that culture. Let’s see a tank top on a Friday at the PGA Championship. Maybe roll one pant leg up as an ode to LL Cool J. Last year got weird, let's get way weirder this season.

Until Tiger Woods plays four rounds of competitive golf, I need us to retire the “Are you here to win?” question.

It tends to find its way to the microphone anytime he’s in the field. The guy is 49 and is dealing with a heap of injuries and surgeries that would force any lesser human to retire. I need to see Tiger play four rounds of competitive golf before we ask him if he thinks he can win over the course of 72 holes. The question is simply there for social media clippage and nothing else.

I need Justin Thomas to be great again.

I find JT to be a good character in professional golf, and someone that, unlike so many of the modern day pros, forces fans to love him or hate him. Those are the athletes that tend to move the needle. It’ll come down to the flatstick (he’s been absolutely dreadful with the putter the last couple of years) and he may have to eventually tinker with some level of arm-lock to fix the issues, but JT getting back to being one of the six or seven guys that truly compete at the big events would be excellent.

I want the Cut Cam to get going this year.

Why are we still not doing this? Golf is a four-day sport that, frankly, doesn’t produce a ton of interest the first two days (it’s just shifting around the leaderboard like Nascar drivers trying to position themselves in the first 50 or so laps). Friday could be more interesting if the way we broadcast golf changed ever so slightly.

PGA TOUR Live does a great job of giving fans an option that isn’t the main broadcast, and shifting the featured hole coverage on Friday to the final two holes on each side of the golf course would be simple, would be fun—and would be marketable. (Imagine “Cut Cam brought to you by Club Car” Sounds right, right?).

I need to make a trip to Nebraska and finally play Sand Hills.

It’s been atop my “never played” list for a few years now and I continue to push off the trip. That’s my travel goal for ’25.

Scottie Scheffler needs to win a non-Augusta major in ’25.

He’s too good and too complete to only have one of the four majors ticked off at this point in his career. The window of brilliance in professional golf is not nearly as long as most think it is and Scottie might have a couple more years of clearly being the most dominant male golfer in the world. He needs to add to the major resume this season and it’ll help his all-time great case if it’s somewhere outside of Georgia.

I need Nelly to win multiple majors this year.

Speaking of dominant players that haven’t quite found their dominant form in the majors, what is 2025 going to look like for Nelly Korda? She has been the most impressive golfer, male or female, the last four years, and 2024 was her “Not Like Us” moment. The interesting part of her career and that of Scottie’s is they win so much we forget all the majors they likely still have on the way. I think ’25 should be the season she wins multiple majors and starts to build that all-time-great resume that we’ve been expecting.

We need a No. 1 vs. No. 1 match at the end of every season.

Speaking of Nelly and Scottie …again… if we are going to continue to do these made-for-TV matches, I think a No. 1 vs. No. 1 match at the end of every season should exist. The best male golfer in the world versus the best female golfer in the world on primetime TV when football isn’t being played. I honestly don’t care about the ratings, I just love utilizing one of the best parts of golf in that anyone can compete against anyone no matter age or gender if you set it up the correct way. One of the struggles of match play on TV is the slow nature of it, so you could easily include a couple of other top-tier players on both the men’s and women’s side of things to have their own matches to carry the broadcast, but having two young Americans both dominated their respective side of the sport seems like a real opportunity for someone out there to make it sing if done the correct way.

I want the Europeans to demolish the Americans in the Ryder Cup.

I’m talking about an Oakland Hills level beatdown. I find the way the Americans have gone about the Ryder Cup process to be very, well, American. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Money remains a major topic, the selection process tends to lean more to the popular names and less to the people playing the best golf and something jarring needs to happen to shake things up (again) on the U.S. side. The Euros showing up and playing team ball on the way to a 19.5-8.5 win could humble the always confident Americans, especially when it’s on this side of the pond.

We need two rockstars battling it out on the back nine at The Masters.

It has been a minute since the Masters has been undecided on the second nine on Sunday and that isn’t great for golf considering how many casuals tune in to that major and that major only.

Think about the last seven editions of the Masters since Sergio and Justin Rose dueled it out in that playoff; the Patrick Reed win was sleepy considering how bad Rory played after that missed eagle putt on No. 2.

2019 was dramatic considering the champion, but it wasn’t dramatic in terms of the finish. Tiger made some great swings down the stretch but the competitive drama left the building when everyone else involved found the water on 12.

2020 was the November Masters with DJ winning by five. 2021 saw Hideki win his first with three bogeys over his last four holes. 2022 was the Scottie four-putt on 18 that still saw the dude win by three. And the last two (Rahm in ’23 and Scottie last season) saw both win by four.

I’m not sure if the course changes have taken a bit of the drama out of the second nine or if this is simply one of those runs where the finish has been decided with a few holes left to play, but two rockstars tied with a couple of holes to play is needed and necessary this season at the first men’s major.

I want another amateur to win on the PGA TOUR.

I had been calling this for years and we finally got to see it happen with Nick Dunlap. I don’t think that will be a one-off situation like Phil in ’91. I would not be surprised to see this happen rather routinely moving forward considering the depth of talent in the amateur world, how comfortable these players are playing in huge events, and how polished and confident they are with their own games.

Someone like Preston Summerhays winning the Phoenix Open wouldn’t surprise me at all in ’25.

I want my uncle to make a hole-in-one this year

My Uncle Dougie is one of the true darlings of this planet, a man who has put people before himself his entire life. He’s also been a hardcore golfer since moving to Arizona some 40 years ago, and has never had an ace despite hovering, for most of his adult life, around a single digit handicap. So, I want 2025 to be the year he finally gets one.

One funny story of Uncle Dougie from a few years ago - he was playing his local course, Dobson Ranch in Mesa, Arizona, and was teeing off on the par-5 5th hole. Dobson is a parkland municipal golf course, so a lot of the holes run adjacent to the others and the 5th hole is a dogleg left par-5. Dougie hit the wipey fade way right, in the direction of the 7th green, one of the par-3s on the front nine. The ball went in the hole on No. 7. Obviously not a hole-in-one, but the crew playing that day insisted that Dougie had to buy drinks after the round because it went in. I believe that credit card never got handed over, but it’s still an amazingly strange golf feat.

Should we consider an adjustment to the President's Cup? Maybe make it a mixed event?

I think the most puzzling part about the Presidents Cup is that there is an opportunity to make it one of the top-three events in golf with a couple of simple tweaks. When you go back to the early ‘90s and think about the Presidents Cup and its inception, it made sense. The Ryder Cup had Europe and the international talent was growing and that was worthy of a showcase. The issue, of course, is that it just simply isn’t as competitive as it could be and when things aren’t competitive, interest wanes.

Me playing H-O-R-S-E against my five-year-old wouldn’t be very interesting to air on television if I’m winning every single match (not to brag) so why are we continuing to push something that is inevitable?

The event needs to be adjusted. It needs some more creativity. It needs to lean into what it could be and not what it has been for decades. Any end of the season golf event has to be compelling or even golf fans won’t tune in. You’re battling golf viewership fatigue, football season starting up and you’re doing it with a product that’s outcome has been written before it begins for the better part of 20 years.

I think about big events in this modern era and how imperative it is to cannonball your way into the pool over just dipping a toe in. A mixed event could be an easy way to differentiate it and make it compelling. Having the top six American men and the top six American women play the top six International men and the top six International women is a cannonball. It would be discussed on PTI and Pardon My Take and all the places that don’t typically discuss golf.