To describe the sentiment that dominated the game of golf for much of the last 12 months, this one-word phrase likely suffices:
FINALLY!
Indeed, in ways large and small, 2025 turned out to be a year in which patience was rewarded. The most obvious example came in April, when Rory McIlroy ended an 11-year winless drought in majors, beating Justin Rose in a playoff to claim the Masters title in his 17th appearance at Augusta National. An agonizingly bumpy final round only made the victory sweeter as McIlroy became the sixth golfer to claim the men’s career Grand Slam.
Yet McIlroy wasn’t the only golfer to turn a career chapter in 2025. So did Scottie Scheffler (winning majors for the first time beyond Magnolia Lane), J.J. Spaun (giving journeymen a hero with his out of nowhere U.S. Open triumph) and Happy Gilmore (coming out of retirement to save a sport). TGL played its long-awaited inaugural season, Tommy Fleetwood grabbed his long-awaited first PGA Tour winner and Cypress Point made a long-awaited return to golf’s competitive spotlight. Heck, even reasonable solutions to slow play seemed to emerge after centuries decades years of hand-wringing.
All these moments and more can be found in Golf Digest’s top 25 Newsmakers of the year. Our annual countdown taking place over the next five days explores the individuals, teams and events that helped define the year. As we acknowledge every year, some are obvious (a road Ryder Cup win for Europe), some unexpected (had you heard of Brian Rolapp or Craig Kessler before this spring?), some happy (the rise of Jeeno Thitikul) some tragic (the L.A. fires) and some still unresolved (will there ever be a deal between the PGA Tour and the PIF?).
We hope our list provides an entertaining way to recall the year that was and frame where the game is going. —Ryan Herrington
Sadly, it was another lost season on the golf course for the 15-time major champ, who spent more time in 2025 following his 16-year-old son Charlie in junior tournaments than walking inside the ropes himself. Tiger began the year optimistically while competing for Jupiter Links Golf Club in the new TGL (of which he’s a co-founder), but his two most memorable moments from SoFi Center were anything but breathtaking shots. Instead, it was him cracking up at a shank by teammate Kevin Kisner and a blooper of his own creation when he mistakenly hit the wrong club to come up well short on an approach. Even so, seeing Tiger “playing” golf was exciting—he hadn’t competed in an official tournament since the 2024 Open—as those viral moments showed the sway Woods still has with golf fans. They would be saddened to learn, then, that Woods had suffered yet another injury/surgery in March (torn Achilles) that ultimately knocked him out of the entire PGA Tour and major championship season. (Although, he still made news at the Masters when Augusta National announced Woods will design a short course at Augusta Municipal Golf Course.) Woods’ personal life kept him in the headlines as well, first for the death of his mother, Tida, in February. On a lighter note, the 82-time PGA Tour winner announced on Instagram in March that he was in a relationship with Vanessa Trump, the ex-wife of Donald Trump Jr. “Love is in the air and life is better with you by my side!” Woods captioned. His fans would say life is better when Tiger is competing, but Woods, who had disc replacement surgery in October, had no timetable for a return when he hosted the Hero World Challenge in December. And with Woods turning 50(!) at the end of the year, the next time he tees it up could be at a PGA Tour Champions event. —Alex Myers
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No. 24: Player-Caddie Breakups 
The prominent player-caddie breakup is nothing new in professional golf. But shocking, lead-headline-worthy splits seemed to be more prevalent than ever in 2025. The Phil and Bones “amicable” parting of ways may have happened in 2017, but it continues to serve as proof, eight years later, that even the most ironclad of partnerships must end.
The first domino fell after the Players Championship, where Matt Fitzpatrick had missed another cut during a poor stretch that saw him fall to 69th in the Official World Golf Ranking, his lowest mark since 2015. Billy Foster, who was on Fitzpatrick’s bag for six years including his U.S. Open win at Brookline in 2022, took to social media the day after to reveal that he and Fitzy were calling it quits. Just a few weeks later, another top player in the throes of a wicked slump, Max Homa, showed up to the Valero Texas Open with a different caddie in place of longtime looper and childhood friend Joe Greiner. It was soon revealed that it was Greiner who made the call, ending a decade-plus long alliance.
Greiner had a short stint on Justin Thomas’ bag before hopping over to the bag of Collin Morikawa, who broke up with his first and only caddie as a pro, JJ Jakovac, after five years. Morikawa then began a caddie carousel that rivaled the college football coaching cycle, ditching Greiner after just five events and trying out an old college teammate KK Limbhasut as well as Fitzpatrick’s ex Foster. When the FedEx Cup Playoffs began, Morikawa was on his fifth different caddie, Mark Urbanek, who split up with Tony Finau after the Open Championship.
Perhaps no breakup tugged at the heartstrings quite like the separation of Joel Dahmen and Geno Bonnalie, whose brother-like relationship was the subject of an entire episode in Season 1 of Netflix’s “Full Swing.” Fortunately, Dahmen stated that they were still “the best of friends” on his X account, but it did serve as yet another example of the extremely fickle nature of the job of bagman. Please, golf gods, don’t take Jordan Spieth and Michael Greller from us next. —Christopher Powers
RELATED: How many shots can a tour caddie save you?
No. 23: Pace of Play 
Can a topic land a place on our Newsmakers countdown because it’s less of a story than in years past? Here at No. 23, “pace of play” proves the answer is an emphatic yes. One of the major hot-button issues in professional golf seemingly forever has been glacially slow rounds on the PGA and LPGA Tour. In March, PGA Tour executives laid out for Golf Digest exactly what they’re doing about it, and the solutions were manifold. More importantly, they came with an admission that it was a real problem, and that it was getting worse.
In fact, things seemed to reach a low point in January, when Dottie Pepper called out the slow play on CBS at the Farmers Insurance Open. But it seemed even by March, at the Players Championship, that the cavalry was coming. The main weapon will take effect in 2026—smaller fields. Gone are 156-player tee sheets that lead to inevitable pile-ups when players make the turn, rounds not being completed until the following morning and leading to logistical nightmares.
Additionally, the PGA Tour commissioned a speed-of-play working group that hatched ideas like publishing individual player times (TBD if that sees the light of day), testing out rangefinders on the Korn Ferry Tour (it saves time and will be allowed in 2026), giving harsher penalties for time violations and quicker rulings by officials facilitated by video review. In June, pace of play had improved by five minutes on the PGA Tour, and it’s going to get even better next year. The same is true on the LPGA Tour, which incorporated a series of harsher penalties for slow play in March and has since seen results. Credit where it’s due—real progress has been made here, and if we’re lucky, “pace of play” won’t even make the top 25 next year. —Shane Ryan
RELATED: The PGA Tour knows pace of play is an issue. Here’s what it’s doing about it
No. 22: “Happy Gilmore 2” 
When “Happy Gilmore” hit theaters in 1996, the movie had modest box-office success but quickly developed a cult following. There were no Oscars, but it did win the pivotal MTV Movie Award for Best Fight (shoutout to Bob Barker).
Nearly three decades later, loyal fans got the sequel they so desperately craved. And while this time around, there was no theatrical release, “Happy Gilmore 2”—starring nearly every golfer in the known universe—immediately turned into a Netflix behemoth, ultimately setting a record on Nielsen’s streaming charts for its premiere weekend. Over three days, 2.89 billion minutes viewed is what we in the media world call … a lot of minutes.
Blanketed by dozens of tour pro cameos (including the likes of Lee Trevino and Nancy Lopez, Adam Sandler’s titular character returned, along with his rival, Christopher McDonald’s Shooter McGavin, and that run-and-gun swing we’ve all tried (and failed) to replicate at the driving range that has become part of golf canon. We’re not really sure if you can call this a spoiler alert, but we can all agree that the sequel doesn’t match the storytelling magic and ridiculous “heights” of the original. Still, it’s inarguable that HG2 briefly took over golf’s consciousness, marrying itself with the PGA Tour, satirizing LIV Golf, launching John Daly’s acting career and throwing Scottie Scheffler behind bars (once again). Everyone you know watched it—or at least logged in a few minutes on Netflix. It performed so well, re-entering the culture in such an impressive way, that our own editorial director had to dole out a mea culpa for his prediction that it would flop.
Golf is as “cool” as it’s ever been—admittedly a low bar—but the success of “Happy Gilmore 2” feels like proof that the sport is worldwide in a brand new way. COVID brought in a large number of players who never would’ve tried it out, pro golf is handing out millions of dollars and Zapruder Film-ing cheating scandals are all the rage on YouTube. Plus, golf influencer-ing has never been more in. (What a sentence that is.) Still, most importantly, people really, really, really love Adam Sandler. As they should. Has there ever been a more menschy mensch? —Greg Gottfried
RELATED: A definitive ranking of every golfer cameo in ‘Happy Gilmore 2’
No. 21: Amateurs playing like pros 
The definition of an “amateur” golfer in 2025 is vastly different than it was just a few years ago. Where trading off your “golf skill or reputation” for financial reward had long been prohibited, anyone now can make a buck from their name, image and likeness. Some call it progress, others madness. There remains a red line, however, for those who play with a little “a” next to their names in that they still can’t take home prize money when playing in a professional event, a Rubicon that Jackson Koivun and Lottie Woad, the No. 1 ranked male and female amateurs in the world, stumbled upon during the summer.
While making the cut in six of seven PGA Tour starts—finishing T-11, T-6, T-5 and T-4 in his four last appearances—Koivun had to turn down close to $1 million in earnings. To say the 20-year-old Auburn undergraduate didn’t profit from the experience isn’t entirely accurate; the performances along with his college/amateur accolades—including a spot on the victorious U.S. Walker Cup team—earned him a PGA Tour card through the PGA Tour U.’s Accelerated Program the day he finally decides he’s turning pro.
Similarly, Woad had to pass on roughly $600,000 in paydays for a T-3 at the Amundi Evian Championship and a win at the Irish Open on the Ladies European Tour before decided it was too much. The week after turning pro in July, the 21-year-old from England won the ISPS Handa Women’s Scottish Open, then registered a T-8 finish at the AIG Women’s British Open. By year’s end, the former Augusta National Women’s Amateur champ had performed well enough to qualify for the CME Group Tour Championship and finish the season with $831,400 in earnings.
In tandem, Koivun and Woad sparked a renewed debate surrounding whether amateurs should get to keep the prize money they would have made in pro events. Proponents say they already get paid for wearing logos and appearing in commercials; why not get a check if they’ve played well over 72 holes? Critics ask what exactly would being an amateur golfer mean if it were allowed. Once again, some call it progress, others madness. —Ryan Herrington
RELATED: Should amateurs earn money for making the cut in a pro event?
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
