Post-major season stock report: Xander way up, what about Rory McIlroy?

TROON, Scotland — After a golf season filled with far too little sleep, it’s helpful to pause for a moment and reflect upon life’s certainties.

For example, the sky is blue, the earth is round, and the golf season revolves around the major championships.

For better or worse, these four weeks are at the center of everything we hold dear as golf fans — and the same goes for the guys between the ropes. 

What is it about the major championships that captures us? My best guess is that it has something to do with finality. The stakes are stark and obvious for everyone involved: Your legacy is your number of major victories. Come Sunday evening, reality is equally as binary: either you’ve won a major or you’ve lost a major. There is no in between.

In an increasingly gray world, there’s something satisfying about this black-and-white. A victory is validation of all that has gone right; a loss is a repudiation of the million small decisions that contributed to it.

As we reflect upon a turbulent season at the majors, including Xander Schauffele’s brilliant victory on Sunday evening at Royal Troon, let’s look upon the glorious finality of the last four months by taking stock of the golf world.

Post-Majors Stock Report

Xander Schauffele: Stock PEAKING

If we were Wall Street analysts, we would warn you that you might be buying Xander Schauffele stock at its high watermark by cashing in just hours after his second major championship win in four months at the Open Championship.

Fortunately, we are not Wall Street analysts, which means we can bask in this glorious high right alongside Xander. After years of languishing in the waiting room just beneath major glory, Schauffele broke through in a massive way in 2024. The two major wins are ultimately all he’ll care about, but the variety between them — one in a shootout at bomb-and-gauge Valhalla; the next in a war of attrition in the heart of linksland — says everything about his development as a tournament golfer.

He started this major season winless; he wakes on Monday morning halfway to the grand slam. That about says it all.

Scottie Scheffler: Stock UP

The bad Scottie resurfaced during Open Championship week, a brutal time for one of his worst putting performances in months. But not even a Sunday bow-out at Troon is enough to diminish the overall quality of Scheffler’s major season, which elevated his game to a historic trajectory. Six wins in a season is brilliant, and a second Masters title in three years is nothing to sniff at, either. It speaks only to his quality as a player that it feels like he’ll look back at this year and regret not getting another major knocked off, given the level he’s played at.

We’ll be monitoring how Scottie handles the grind of the Tour season in ’25. He has struggled with keeping his game sharp from March through July to this point in his career, and has talked about wanting to reevaluate his playing schedule in order to peak at the Opens. Still, the arrow is pointing firmly up.

Bryson DeChambeau: Stock UP

Bryson might never win an Open unless he stumbles upon a week with friendlier-than-usual conditions, but that’s a conversation for later on in his career. For now, it’s all sunshine and rainbows for DeChambeau, who was golf’s preeminent comeback story in 2024 after claiming his second major victory at the U.S. Open in June.

His equipment is better than it’s ever been. His spirits are better than they’ve ever been. And with his blend of power and precision, it’s hard to imagine him being any worse than the second or third favorite in the field heading into Augusta in April and Quail Hollow in May. If he keeps this trajectory, it wouldn’t shock me if he’s the next golfer to get to two (or three) legs of the grand slam. But if and when that happens, the Open could prove a serious bugaboo.

Tiger Woods: Stock DOWN

Look, we’re never going to rule out Tiger Woods come major championship season, but the simple fact is that we’ve just emerged from a major season where Tiger made four major starts and missed three cuts. His best finish of the bunch was dead-last at the Masters.

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It’s clearly a question of practice, not ability. But until he’s playing multiple tournament rounds outside of the majors — something he teased in his post-round presser on Friday at Troon — it’s hard to convincingly feel confident about the state of his game during a major week.

Well, maybe except for Augusta.

Rory McIlroy: Stock DOWN

Is it better to have led and lost, or not ever led at all? This’s the question facing Rory at the end of his most agonizing major championship season on record as his major-less streak extends to a decade. 

McIlroy is still part of golf’s monoculture, which means that unlike his non-Tiger counterparts, he’s a story every week, win or lose. This year, as with each of the last 10 years, he leaves the major season stuck on four career victories — and fair or not, that’s a story much bigger than some of the other non-winners on this list.

It’s not all bad for Rory, who will surely be able to take some good from his brief flurry of soul-stealing golf in the middle of Sunday at the U.S. Open. We haven’t seen Rory activate into that level of killer-instinct at a major in, well, a while. But it will be hard for him and us not to spend the next eight months litigating the pair of sub-4-footers that came after that stretch, and how hard it will be for him to get back into that position again.

Jon Rahm: Stock DOWN

It was the major season from hell for Rahmbo, who went missing at Augusta and Valhalla, then had to WD from Pinehurst with a bizarre (and quite gruesome-sounding) toe injury. His game returned to form in time for the Open Championship, where a Sunday charge netted a T7 finish that more resembled Rahm’s typically sharp form.

Still, he leaves a year of his prime without having seriously challenged for a major win. For a competitor of his ability level, that’s frustrating.

Brooks Koepka: Stock IN QUESTION

Brooks was another expected contender who vanished from the scene at a few major starts this season. He never played poorly, per se, but never quite managed to find himself in contention.

Koepka’s game is perhaps more susceptible to venue variance than most (he generally does better at the tougher courses), but it was surprising to go through an entire major season without seeing his name on the first page of the leaderboard. 

Justin Rose: Stock UP

Rosey did not get the second-career major triumph he so badly desired in 2024, not in a T6 finish at Valhalla in May nor in a spirited qualifier-to-runner-up performance at Troon in July, but he was one of the sport’s most delightful stories anyway. 

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In an era of pro golf when so many players use their platform for score-settling, Rose kept his head down, said all the right things, and played inspired golf when it mattered most. That’s a pretty good story, if you ask me.

Ludvig Aberg: Stock UP

Tough few weeks for the young Swede, who had a stranglehold on the Scottish Open before an uncharacteristic Sunday, then missed the second cut of his major season at the Open. After so many months of being told he wasn’t a rookie, Aberg has started to look like one down the stretch of this year.

That’s just fine, of course. The rookie wall comes for most, and it’s impossible to talk about his first year in earnest without mentioning his performance in his maiden Masters voyage in April — a solo-second finish that will carry him well into the new year.

He fell short of a historic rookie year, sure, but Aberg isn’t going anywhere.

Collin Morikawa: Stock NEUTRAL

He’s played the best golf of anyone in the world without a win in 2024. He also played some of the best major championship golf of anyone in the world during that stretch. Glass half-full: 2024’s performance is a harbinger of future success to come. Glass half-empty: it’s a big missed opportunity in a year where he played some of his young career’s best golf.

Either way, Collin heads into ’25 hungry for more.

Viktor Hovland: Consult Elon Musk about stock price

I don’t fully know how to categorize Hovland’s season. On one hand, he seemed to lose his game altogether and still managed a solo third-place finish at the PGA. On the other, he seemed to lose his game altogether after being on the brink of a few major wins in ’23.

Hov remains in the conversation at each major he plays, and that’s a good thing. I just suppose I’m wondering how much of that conversation involves pondering life after death, as he did in an interview with The Telegraph.

Max Homa: Stock UP

I say this confidently now, two days removed from Friday’s triumphant made-cut on the number (and subsequent super-introspective celebration) at the Open: Max Homa is trending in the right direction.

Whether he felt that way before he drained a 25-footer to make the cut on the number at Royal Troon is a different story, but with a career-best major finish at the Masters in ’24, Homa keeps inching closer to major glory.

Justin Thomas: Consider Dramamine before purchasing

By Sunday morning, Justin Thomas had played five of the best nine-hole loops of anyone at Royal Troon and one of the very worst. As he prepared to tee off on Sunday afternoon, his Friday front-nine 45 looked like it might live in infamy as one of the all-time “what-ifs” of Thomas’ career. (He would have been several shots clear of the field on Sunday if not for that debacle.)

Then he stepped to the first tee needing a low number to stay in the hunt on Sunday and blasted his drive straight off the face of the earth. OB, tournament over, T31 finish incoming.

It was that kind of major season for Thomas. A few flashes of brilliance followed by a few truly head-scratching moments. The good news is that’s miles better than where he was last year at this time. The bad news is it’s not particularly close to a return to world No. 1 form.

I don’t know what to make of that, other than I’m sure by the time this story is published it will changed again.

Jordan Spieth: Creditors are reviewing

For better or worse, the Jordan Spieth rollercoaster seems to have settled in a place neither in contention nor fully out of it.

He’s clearly dealing with an unresolved injury that is impacting his play, but he turns 31 in five days and it’s been a long while since we’ve seen a spark of something. That’s confounding, and disappointing for those of us who remember the glory days of the mid-2010s.