The Year in Golf

I still miss not having the PGA in August.  I know that golf fans are supposed to watch the Playoffs in August, but that doesn't really work for me because:  (1) the LIV guys aren't in the Playoffs, and (2) there are three Playoff events, but the second one has only 50 players, and the third one has only 30 players.  To me, you need at least 70 players to have a real four-round tournament.  So, for me, the last real event of the year is the FedEx St. Jude Championship, which is the first playoff event.  That took place last weekend in Memphis, and it was a cracker.  So this is a good time to wrap up the golf season.

It was a pretty good year for golf.  We didn't blog about it as much as usual, in part because the lack of the LIV golfers means that I just don't watch that many Tour events.  Also, it seemed like I was busy almost every weekend there was a major, so I didn't get to say much about any of them.  So let's cover the year now.

Before the Masters:  Sometimes a player will get really hot in January and February, but that didn't happen this year.  Rory McIlroy had the best start to the year, winning both the Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the Players Championship.  Hideki Matsuyama won The Sentry, which began the tour in Hawaii.  Ludvig Aberg won the Genesis Invitational.  Russell Henley won the Arnold Palmer Invitational.  None of these events was particularly memorable.

The Masters:  The 2025 Masters was the best tournament of the year, and an all-time classic.  Going into the last round, McIlroy was tied with Bryson DeChambeau for the lead at 10-under par, and these were the same two golfers who had gone down to the wire in the U.S. Open the year before.  This year, DeChambeau blew up, shooting 37+38=75 to fade from contention.  Patrick Reed shot a 69 on the last day to reach 9 under, but that was never going to be low enough to win.  So McIlroy should have had an easy time of it.  In fact, after 10 holes he was 14 under par and about five strokes clear of the field.  But he took a bogey on 11, a double bogey (!) on 13, and a bogey on 14.  That left him at 10 under -- which still should have been enough to win, but now Justin Rose was charging.  Rose would shoot 34+32=66 to go from 5 under to 11 under.  Still, McIlroy steadied the ship with birdies on 15 and 17, and he went to the 18th hold with a one-shot lead at 12 under.  Amazingly, he bogeyed the last (on the back nine he had three birdies, three bogeys, one double bogey, and only two pars).  McIlroy and Rose finished in a tie, and everyone had to wonder if McIlroy was too snakebit to end his 10-year losing streak in majors.  But in the playoff, McIlroy hit one of the great shots in Masters history -- a gorgeous approach that ended up only four feet from the pin.  He sank the putt and completed the career grand slam.  It was a tremendous victory for McIlroy, but it also seemed to exhaust him -- he would spend the rest of the year not being in contention.

The PGA:  The 2025 PGA was held at Quail Hollow, near Charlotte, and for most of the time you could be forgiven for thinking that you had tuned in to the Wachovia Classic.  But on Saturday, Scottie Scheffler took control of the tournament with a fantastic 65, and then he dominated the field on Sunday to win by five shots over DeChambeau, Harris English, and Davis Riley.  It was Scheffler's third major title.

The U.S. Open:  The 2025 U.S. Open was a grim affair, played at Oakmont Country Club, where thousands of trees were massacred, leaving the whole place with a Once-ler vibe.  That vibe was made worse on Sunday, when the final round was played in a driving rainstorm.  I personally thought the course was not playable, but it was obvious that NBC just wanted the tournament to end as soon as possible.  For hours, a collection of mostly-unknown golfers staggered from hole to hole, trying not to drown.  But finally, J.J. Spaun birdied the last two holes to finish at 1 under par and win the tournament by two shots.  His final putt, which traveled 64 feet across the treacherous (and soaked) 18th green, may have been the best putt I've ever seen.

The British Open:  The British Open was actually played in Northern Ireland, as it returned to Royal Portrush in Ulster.  The locals had high hopes for McIlroy, but he still hadn't fully recovered from his early-season adventures, and was never a serious threat.  Indeed, no one was a serious threat to Scottie Scheffler, who dominated the proceedings from beginning to end.  He shot 68+64+67+68=267, 17 under par, and he won by four shots.  It was his fourth major title, his 17th victory on Tour, and it proved beyond any question that he is, for now, the best player in the world -- and probably the best player we've seen since Tiger Woods.  The biggest story in golf is whether Scheffler can overcome whatever barriers kept stars like Brooks Koepka, Jordan Spieth, and McIlroy from reaching eight or nine majors in their careers.

Other events:  The U.S. Women's Open, at Erin Hills in Wisconsin, was won by Maja Stark of Sweden.  Justin Thomas won the RBC Heritage for his 16th victory on Tour.  Sepp Straka won the Truist Championship.  Ryan Fox won the Canadian Open.  Keegan Bradley won the Travelers Championship.  Scheffler won the Memorial Tournament.  Again, none of these tournaments grabbed your attention.  The FedEx St. Jude went to Justin Rose, who birdied holes 14 through 17 to force a playoff with Spaun.  In the playoff, both golfers parred the 18th hole.  Then both of them birdied the 18th.  Then Rose birdied it again, and when Spaun missed his shorter putt, Rose had his 12th Tour victory.

What's left:  The top 50 players on Tour are in Maryland this weekend for the BMW Championship, which was one of my favorite events back when it was still the Western Open.  Next week they'll be in Atlanta for the Tour Championship, which should go to Scheffler.  And then we get the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in late September.  I haven't really watched the Ryder Cup since 1999, and I'm still trying to decide whether to get back into it.  I'll probably just watch the highlights -- it's hard to give up two days of football just to worry about whether the Americans will finally make some putts.