The 2025 PGA Tour season is a six-game tournament, moving after Torrey Pines’ Genesis Invitational is followed by wildfires in the Los Angeles area.
With the end of the West Coast swing, we are looking at some of the things we’ve seen early in the season. Who left a deep impression on people? What have we learned so far? Latest about when it’s possible to see Tiger Woods?
ESPN.com golf reporters Mark Schlabach and Paolo Uggetti answered some big questions early this season.
What big takeaway do you have since the beginning of the golf season?
Mark Schrabach: It’s a good thing for the PGA Tour to get Rory McIlroy to play great golf again. Although Scottie Scheffler’s dominance in 2024 is one of the most memorable seasons in history, the fact that someone outside Xander Schauffele challenges him makes things a little disgusting.
Rory had the game and the guts to challenge Scheffler, and his performance at Pebble Beach Pro-Am offers some hope that he will return to the peak form. The PGA Tour requires superstars (beyond Scheffler) to win big games, and there is little McIlroy’s name.
I included Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth in the same category and their early results in 2025 should make golf fans want them to turn things around (more below).
Paolo uggetti: The venue is very important! It’s arguably obvious, but there’s a reason why Cobblestone Beach Pro-Am, Kapalua’s Sentinels and Waster Management open to create compelling matches. Whether they were in Phoenix with Thomas Detry last week, fun classes can be for fun matches, whether it’s a close match or an out-of-control victory. Bringing fun games.
If the weather cooperates, the swing on the West Coast always seems to be able to pass on. On this topic, we will see a drop this week instead of going to Riviera Country Club, but tour again to Tory Pines. The game is still convincing given that the best players in the world have scored it in San Diego this time, but we certainly missed one of the best games in sports.
Which player have you been most impressed with so far?
Schrabach: We’ve seen Sepp Straka’s abilities in the past, but the 31-year-old has put everything together so far this season. He has four top 25 in five games, including his third PGA Tour victory on American Express. He tied for seventh place at AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and ranked 15th in the WM Phoenix Open.
Apart from the green work around him, Straka is not good enough now. He ranked fifth in shooting percentage (1.816) and approach (1.151), finishing seventh in the T-shirt (1.412). Straka accounts for 78% of the greens and 71.5% of the fairways in the regulations, ranking third and eighth on the tour respectively.
Straka picks up Kevin Kisner’s caddie Duane “Dewey” Bock in 2023, so far, this is A great partnership. European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald is excited about what he sees from Austrian-born Straka this season.
Uggetti: At some point last year, Justin Thomas fell to the 33rd place in the world golf and hopes to be looking for any momentum to get his game back on track. However, Thomas seems to have turned the corner since the Tour Championship, increasing distance while improving his putting struggles and he is starting to see results.
Thomas finished in the top five at the Waste Management Open last week, and he tied for second in American Express earlier this year. The T-48 at Pebble Beach is awesome, but overall, Thomas’s game seems to be heading in the right direction, with a better start to this season than in recent years.
Rory or Scottie: Who will get more wins at the end of the season?
Schrabach: According to early results, Rory seems to be going through a big year – maybe he will even catch a green jacket in the Masters to eventually finish the professional grand slam. But, I can’t compete with the world’s number one golfer who won seven times last year.
Scheffler’s 2025 campaign started late as a Christmas cooking accident caused him to need surgery on his right palm. He returned from a long layoff after being eliminated about a month ago and tied for ninth in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and ranked 25th in the WM Phoenix Open.
Scottie’s swing looks good, and more representations will only get better. The tour is about to score in Florida’s swing, and Schaffler has won two championships in the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Players Championship. He will win again in 2025 than everyone else.
Uggetti: I was inspiring how McIlroy performed surgery around the pebble beach during his first PGA Tour this season. As always, his driver was a weapon, but the way he hit the wedge and made no big mistakes throughout the four rounds was impressive.
The question of whether he can finally win another major will continue to hang over him, but I feel his golf level is so high that he will be able to get into the argument any time this year. Smart money might be Scheffler, but I’ll make it for the third player in the world.
It’s a long way to go, but are there any early Ryder Cup ideas after the start of this season?
Schrabach: If JT and Jordan Spieth can maintain their current form, there won’t be much debate to send them to Bethpage Black, and for the US team, that’s a good thing to play well.
Spieth’s left wrist injury is obviously worse than what he’s willing to accept the media, but that’s probably the biggest reason for his mediocrity in the past few seasons. After eight months of layoffs, he tied for fourth place at TPC Scottsdale five months after his surgery in August, which put him from 84th in the world rankings Rised to 65.
Spieth is second in proximity and competition and 13th in Phoenix. He had only two bogeys in 72 holes. That’s very promising.
As mentioned above, JT has been playing better golf since late last year. He finished second on American Express and tied for sixth in Phoenix. It seems that his nearly three-year drought is about to end.
The PGA Tour requires superstars (Scheffler) to win the game, and Thomas and Spieth will have big rebounds.
Uggetti: Keegan Bradley will perform real results as the player captain. Bradley was the surprise choice to lead the United States in September at Bethpage Black and is currently the No. 13 player in the world. He has started three top 15 seasons of the 2025 season and is playing the best golf of his career, dating back to last season. He has pointed out that he won’t choose himself as the captain’s draft pick, meaning he needs to be in the top six of all Americans to automatically qualify.
It’s still early, and Keegan is currently ranked 20th, but it doesn’t take much to see him shoot that ranking. More importantly: if he continues to play level throughout the year and is outside the top six, then he should have a chat anyway.
Championship host Tiger Woods invites Tanaka class again at Genesis?
Schrabach: I was a little surprised that the tiger was even in the field of Genesis Invitational on Friday. But a few days after benefiting from Woods’ TGR Foundation in the tournament, Woods announced that he was on the court and intended to play.
Tiger has not competed since he missed the layoffs at the Open at Royal Troon in July. His lumbar spine had a microcompression surgery to relieve pain in his lower back in mid-September, believed to be his sixth guard surgery in the last 10 years, so he made a comeback in injuries to everything else.
Although this is a missed opportunity represented in the competition, Woods’ decision is certainly understandable. Maybe we’ll see him performing at the Arnold Palmer Invitational March 6-9 at Mastercard’s Bay Hill in Orlando, Florida. Tigers won the API eight times, most recently in the 2012-13 back-to-back competition.
I can’t imagine that Tiger won’t play before the Masters from April 10-13.
