Golf Digest Honors: Recapping the best golf ‘accomplishments’ of 2025

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Welcome again to Golf Digest Honors, our annual tradition where pros, amateurs and weekend golfers are judged as equals. All year long we fawn over prize money and polished skill, but once a season we strive to recognize even more. Who among us produced feats that flashed the ethereal magic of this universal game? As we look ahead to 2026 season, keep us apprised of incredible accomplishments at your club or course by sending nominations to [email protected] with “Honors” in the subject title. —Max Adler

BEST FAMILY FEAT https://www.golfdigest.com/content/dam/images/golfdigest/fullset/2023/1/GD0226_GDHONORS_02.jpg

Jim Rohrstaff, co-founder of Tara Iti and Te Arai in New Zealand, took his two sons and wife, Kara, on a trip to Scotland in July, and what happened on the 280-yard eighth hole at Cullen Links is a first. Jim hit driver and saw his ball land on the front left of the green then roll down a backslope toward the right pin, which was partially obstructed from the tee. “Good shot, maybe off the back, we thought,” said Rohrstaff, a 3-handicap.

His 18-year-old son, Blake, a 4-handicap, hit next with a 3-wood. Same thing. At the green, the Rohrstaff’s younger son, Eric, nonchalantly walked by the cup and uttered: “There’s two right here.” The family went nuts, celebrating with tequila before the next hole. Jim, 47, couldn’t sleep that night. He told his son: “This is the coolest thing ever, but some people won’t believe us.” No matter. The group could see the green the entire time, so no mischievous person could have interfered. Consecutive aces on a par 4 by a father and son?

“It’ll be something that we’ll talk about until my last breath,” Rohrstaff said. “It might even be the very last thing that we talk about.” The family is working on their own display with the golf balls and the bottle of tequila. —Stephen Hennessey

BEST PAR

If the hardest shot in golf is the one after a shank, Greg Rollins begs to differ. Playing alongside partner Ben Chapman in the first round of the 2025 Maine Four-Ball Championship at Northeast Harbor G.C., 6-handicap Rollins selected driver off the tee on the par-4 seventh—a 270-yard hole that bends to the right—and hit a pull that traveled “so far into the woods.” Chapman, a scratch-handicap, played safe. “I put my driver back, grabbed a 5-iron and put it directly behind this little pine tree, in jail.” On a birdie hole, the two were in danger of making bogey or worse. Rollins reloaded, made “a swing half out of frustration,” and hit a high fade onto the green, 20 feet from the cup. “Like many golfers before me, I felt a very complicated sensation of hitting a gorgeous provisional.”

Chapman didn’t recover well and was facing double bogey. After a cursory search near the edge of the woods, Rollins wisely declared his first ball lost. Carrying the weight of the team, Rollins drained the putt for a “second-ball eagle” for a team par. “It was the perfect case of ‘What could’ve been,’ ” Rollins says. “Seriously, why couldn’t I do that the first time?” —Drew Powell

Best Day https://www.golfdigest.com/content/dam/images/golfdigest/fullset/2023/1/GD0226_GDHONORS_03.jpg

Niel Phillips’ father drove to the college tournament disappointed he’d missed his son’s ace, only to be treated to an instant replay of sorts. Day 1 of the Chick-fil-A Invitational at Stonebridge G.C. in Rome, Ga., is 36 holes. In both rounds, Sewanee sophomore Niel Phillips started on the 182-yard eighth hole. He hit 6-iron in the colder morning; a 7 in the warmer afternoon.

It’s a stern and generally featureless hole with a flat green. Both pitch marks were dead online short of the cup, which hadn’t been changed. His playing partners were the same, too, and all the young men did their best to maintain an atmosphere befitting a tournament while congratulating the craziest feat each will ever witness—a golfer starting two rounds with a hole-in-one in one day.

“Only in college,” Phillips said of the double shotgun opportunity, adding, “It was the best day of golf in my life.” Phillips carded even and one-under rounds, but a 79 (seven over) the next day dropped him to T-14 for the event. The Course at Sewanee is adding a Niel Phillips burger to the menu—a double-patty, of course—with strictly no royalties for the amateur. —Max Adler

BEST SHOT 2243127889

Jan Kruger

The 7,042nd shot was the sweetest.

Jordan Gumberg was playing in his 34th DP World Tour event of the season and was oh-so-close to earning full status for 2026 coming down the stretch at the Genesis Championship in South Korea, the last regular-season event of the year.

At the par-5 home hole, the 30-year-old American figured he needed to make birdie. His tee shot left him 272 yards to a back-left pin guarded by water and a large bunker. Gumberg decided laying up and trying to get up and down was his best chance. His third shot from 58 yards landed softly into the left fringe and slowly trickled down and into the cup for an eagle. Gumberg and his caddie reveled, certain he’d earned status, which was confirmed moments later by tour officials. It was the best seventh-place tie of his life.

“I saw the ball land on the green and trickle over the hill. You couldn’t see anything,” Gumberg said. “The crowd went nuts, we went nuts. It was the best shot I’ve hit in my career so far.” It was also the last shot of his season. —Jay Coffin

Robert MacIntyre was one of the few players on a soggy Sunday at the U.S. Open to tackle brutish Oakmont Country Club with a red number (two-under-par 68), and when he stood before the media immediately after the round, there was a hopeful gleam in the Scotsman’s eye that he’d finally done enough to win a major. “Today, I said to myself, ‘Why not be me today?’” MacIntyre shared.

He then retired to a quiet spot in the clubhouse—albeit with a camera focused on him—and watched on a monitor as J.J. Spaun rolled in a stunning 64-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole to beat him by two. MacIntyre could have dropped his head in despair, but in a reflexive display of sportsmanship, he offered far more than a golf clap, robustly slapping his hands together while mouthing the one word he could come up with: “Wow.”

Already a popular figure in the golf world, MacIntyre’s “good guy” status reached new heights, and on social media that day, the most common description used was “class.” —Tod Leonard

BEST PARTNER Marc Dull

Marc Dull and caddie talk on the sixth hole during the quarterfinals of the 2025 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball.

Simon Bruty

Marc Dull and Chip Brooke know how to keep a secret. Last May, the Florida golf buddies were sitting on a doozy when they arrived at New Jersey’s Plainfield Country Club to compete for their seventh time in the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball. Should they make match play and win in the opening round—a real possibility given they reached the semifinals in 2017 and finals in 2018—Dull would be facing their next opponents alone. Brooke’s daughter, Peyton, was graduating from high school the same day as the second round and quarterfinals, a scheduling conflict that arose after the pair already had qualified for the championship.

After Dull and Brooke beat 2016 champs Nathan Smith and Todd White in the first round, Dull showed up by his lonesome the next morning to face John Ramsey and Chadd Slutzky. That’s when he informed the USGA of what happened and confirmed with rules officials he was OK to play by himself. Some initial jitters aside, the 39-year-old caddie at Streamsong Resort settled into the match, the former finalist in the U.S. Mid-Amateur holing several four- to eight-foot putts to hang around. (“They were probably assuming I’m going to miss one or two of them. We work for a living; we’re not professional golfers, but I made them all,” Dull said.) Birdies on 12 and 13 and a par on 14 allowed him to rally from 1 down and pull off a 2-and-1 victory—the first time in the championship’s 10-year history a single won a match. Brooke had just watched his daughter get her diploma when he got the text that Dull had pulled off the upset. Brooke would return to New Jersey if Dull managed to win again that afternoon versus Carson Looney and Hunter Powell. But his luck wouldn’t hold up, losing 1 up.

https://www.golfdigest.com/content/dam/images/golfdigest/fullset/2025/12/chip-brooke-daughter-graduation.jpg

Chip Brooke with his daughter, Peyton, at her high school graduation.

“He was awesome,” Brooke, 49, said of Dull. “We figured it was the kind of course where he could hang around, that birdies were hard to come by, and he played his heart out.” Dull’s heroics earned the team a spot in the 2026 championship. Brooke has no more graduations coming up. —Ryan Herrington

BEST PRESS CONFERENCE

Apart from a particularly bizarre day in Louisville in 2024, Scottie Scheffler has never been the most interesting man on tour. That all changed at Royal Portrush when Scheffler used his press conference to ponder a question that has plagued not just golfers, but philosophers, for centuries: “What’s the point?” he asked himself aloud.

“I love being able to play this game for a living. It’s one of the greatest joys of my life. But does it fill the deepest wants and desires of my heart? Absolutely not.” Golf Digest Contributing Editor Shane Ryan was in the press room and said the monologue caught even veteran reporters by surprise.

“He spoke about wrestling with a strange existential truth in the same exact tone he’d use for describing why he chose a 7-iron instead of an 8,” Ryan said. “A lot of journalists were laughing at lines that were meant with total sincerity. It was like they had no clue how to react to somebody digging deep and revealing something that was so far from the boilerplate talking points.”

Of course, Scheffler would also go on to win. Instead of stuffing another bill in golf’s cliché jar, he gave fans, journalists and fellow pros something much more to think about, and maybe, just maybe, that was the point. —Coleman Bentley

In September, 4-year-old Levi Antal went viral with footage of his hole-in-one at the 108-yard fifth hole at Beverly Park Short Course in Knoxville, Tenn. “Oh, my goodness gracious,” says his father as the ball leaves the driver face. Later, jubilant from the shot as well as the hat and snow cone gifted from the course, young Levi recounted: “I just hit it straight, and it rolled up to the green and then turned into the hole.”

Neither of Levi’s parents are golfers, but their son got interested in the game while staying at an Airbnb near a course on a family vacation. When they returned from their trip, they took Levi to the local short course to try it, and a golfer was born. Now Levi “begs to go,” so his parents walk with him about twice a week. Many golfers wait their entire lives for an ace.

As we celebrate young Levi, let’s also tip our cap to Englishman John Payne, who made his first hole-in-one the day after his 90th birthday this July. —CB

Best YouTube Performance

When two-time U.S. Open champ Bryson DeChambeau had Stephen Curry on his popular “Breaking 50” series, the Golden State point guard stole the show. Playing a two-man scramble from the forward tees at Lake Merced Golf Club, Curry drove the green on the par-4 first to five feet then made the putt for eagle. He drove the green on two other 300-yard-plus par 4s to set up easy birdies and even out-drove the long-hitting DeChambeau a couple times as the duo shot 49!

The team used 11 of Curry’s shots from tee to green compared to 14 of DeChambeau’s. Factoring the opening eagle plus two solo birdies on par 3s, one could argue the two-time NBA MVP was the MVP that day. Toward the end of the episode, DeChambeau says, “You need to play professional,” to which Curry replies, “Don’t you start there.” Doesn’t sound so crazy once the 37-year-old retires. —Alex Myers

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BEST PLAYOFF WIN

It wasn’t so much the shot as it was the celebration that caused Richard Teder to go viral. Upon holing a 50-yard punch chip for an eagle 2 on the third extra hole at West Lancashire, grabbing the last spot at his Final Qualifier for the 153rd Open Championship in the process, the 20-year-old amateur couldn’t find enough people to high five before his caddie applied the mother of all bear hugs, the R&A camera capturing it all.

If his reaction to playing his way to Royal Portrush was endearing (after a double bogey on his 36th hole dropped him into the playoff), then his backstory proved inspirational. Teder is from Estonia, population 1.3 million but with only an estimated 2,200 male golfers, according to the European Golf Association. He got hooked on the game as a 6-year-old after tagging along with his aunt, who earned 10 free rounds of golf for winning a tennis tournament. But with just seven courses in the former Soviet republic and a five-month-or-so golf season due to the weather, Teder spent winters in Spain to develop his game, eventually moving inside the top 75 of the World Amateur Golf Ranking thanks to him hitting it 300-plus yards off the tee.

His week in Northern Ireland as the first Estonian to play in a major championship ended with him missing the cut by seven strokes, but the passion for the game continues. “It doesn’t really feel real,” Teder said of his time at Portrush. “But I know I belong here.” —RH

MOST PATIENT Dawn Woodard

Logan Whitton

It took about an hour after winning the biggest golf tournament of her life for Dawn Woodard finally to find a moment to look at her phone. What she saw when she did was almost as overwhelming as what had just transpired—a 20th-hole win in the final of the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur to claim her first USGA title in her 37th career start. “I opened it, and it had a couple hundred messages,” she recalled a few months after her September victory at Virginia’s Omni Homestead Resort.

The 51-year-old from Greenville, S.C., had imagined how it might feel to come out on top after 34 years of trying (her first USGA start came at the 1991 U.S. Girls’ Junior). She hadn’t given much thought, though, to how others would react. Perhaps she should have, considering that the camaraderie of being a career amateur was one of the reasons Woodard, an All-American at Furman in the 1990s, was so excited to turn 50 and start a new chapter to her golf career.

“Those tournaments are so special because of the relationships and the friends that you’ve developed and the people that you get to know,” says Woodard, a three-time medalist at the U.S. Mid-Amateur who surprisingly hadn’t gone any farther than the quarterfinals in a USGA amateur championship.

That Woodard has a great story of her triumph in the final over Sue Wooster makes things even sweeter: 1 down on the 18th hole, Woodard rolled in a 18-foot par putt to extend the match to extra holes. After tying the first playoff hole, Woodard found the fairway with her tee shot on the par-5 20th hole, laying up and two-putting for par. Wooster came up short with her approach shot and missed her 15 footer to extend the match.

Woodard was particularly appreciative to share the moment in person with her husband, Jason, who surprised her by driving overnight to watch the final, and Cissye Gallagher, wife of former tour pro Jim Gallagher Jr. and one of her closest friends, who caddied for her in the final. “She’s worked really hard this year,” Gallagher told the USGA after the win. “She’s worked on her wedge game, and she’s gotten fit. She’s just really put in the time and energy to do it. I’m really proud of her.”

The celebrating continued a month later with a weekend-long outing at her home course, Thornblade Club, another hundred family and friends in attendance leaving her grateful once more. “Everybody has been so happy for me,” Woodard says. “That part has been just as special as having the trophy and winning.” —RH

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This article was originally published on golfdigest.com