The 10 most compelling golfers at the 2025 Masters | Monday Finish

Welcome back to the Monday Finish — and welcome to the best week of the year! Here at Monday Finish HQ, we’re off to Augusta. But first, some important business …

GOLF STUFF I LIKE

A compelling Masters field.

Each of the 96 competitors [editor’s note: 95, following Vijay Singh‘s WD] at the 2025 Masters has a journey that’s compelling in its own right, from the oldest (Bernhard Langer, 67) to the youngest (Noah Kent, 20) to the most recent winner (Brian Harman) to the twins (Nicolai and Rasmus Højgaard) to the comeback kids (Daniel Berger, to name one) — you get the idea. Everybody in the field has done something special to get here.

There’s Langer, playing in his final Masters on the 40th anniversary of his first Masters win. There’s Angel Cabrera, who missed several Masters after being in prison and just won on the PGA Tour Champions. There are trending PGA Tour pros who keep contending and are hunting a third major, like Justin Thomas and the probably-currently-underrated Collin Morikawa. There are past Masters champs coming in from LIV and showing some form, like Sergio Garcia and Patrick Reed. There’s Joaquin Niemann, who has shown worldwide just how good he is but hasn’t necessarily done so in major championships. And there are a couple of European Ryder Cuppers I expect to contend in Tommy Fleetwood and Shane Lowry. There’s everybody else, too.

Enough waffling. Let’s get to the top 10.

10. Jordan Spieth. This year marks the 10-year anniversary of Spieth’s 2015 Masters win; it feels like he’s won at Augusta three or four times but, so far, just the one. That Spieth was different from this Spieth but he’s shown just enough recent form — three top-12s in his last six starts — to get the Spiethians to believe. In his last four Masters he has two top-fours and two missed cuts. Which version will we get this week?

9. Ludvig Åberg. Yes, the guy from the YouTube video! The Swedish sensation finished runner-up in his Masters debut last year — the first major of his young career, by the way — and claimed one of this year’s top trophies at the Genesis Invitational. But he enters the week off two consecutive missed cuts. Which direction is Ludvig trending?

8. Phil Mickelson. What if I told you there was a three-time Masters champ who finished runner-up just two years ago, won a major two years before that and enters this week with two top-six finishes his last three events? Enter 54-year-old Phil Mickelson, who is one of the more [pick your own adjective here, literally, they almost all work] golfers in modern history. I don’t expect him to win. But I suspect we’ll see Lefty inside the top 20 come Sunday.

7. Brooks Koepka. Don’t forget about this guy. We always feel dumb when we do, especially at majors, which is particularly silly because he has more than anyone since Tiger and Phil. In 2023 Koepka nearly won the Masters and then did win the PGA; last year he made the cut at all four but didn’t do much on the weekend. He’s playing fairly well — he finished second at LIV’s Singapore event. But specific form has never meant as much for this guy as for most pros. Being Brooks Koepka is what matters.

6. Xander Schauffele. He’s the most recent first-time major champion in men’s golf. He’s also the most recent second-time major champ. But Schauffele battled injury and rust to start the 2025 season; it’s tough to know for sure whether we’ll get the major champ or the rusty golfer this week. Still, I’d bet on the former. Schauffele has played one excellent round in a row, a final-round 66 in Houston, which seems like a step in the right direction. More importantly there’s his absurd streak of 11 majors in row where he’s finished inside the top 20. Let’s make that a dozen.

5. Jon Rahm. Rahm stacks up top-10s on LIV. He won there twice last season. Week in, week out he’s the breakaway circuit’s best player. But Rahm’s major season in 2024 was odd and underwhelming; he finished T45 in his Masters title defense, missed the cut at the PGA and withdrew from the U.S. Open before finishing T7 at the Open Championship. Is this the week we get the major-championship Rahmbo who is in the conversation for best in the world?

4. Viktor Hovland. He’s one of the most compelling players at the Masters because he’s one of the most compelling figures in professional golf. Hovland is a thinker and a tinkerer and has been to the wilderness and back. Most recently he won the Valspar despite admitting he felt lost with his golf swing and almost didn’t play. How do you grade a guy who’s arriving at Augusta off an MC-MC-MC-WIN four-tournament stretch? We’re excited to see.

3. Scottie Scheffler. He hasn’t won this year, which is only noteworthy because he did that so regularly last year. But Scheffler also hasn’t finished outside the top 25 in six starts and just finished T2 at the Houston Open. If that’s what it looks like when he’s injured and rusty, well, that’s why he’s Scottie Scheffler. It would be surprising not to see the World No. 1 and defending champion anywhere besides the middle of contention.

2. Bryson DeChambeau. Last year DeChambeau threw down an incredible major season; he finished a career-best T6 at the Masters and was second at the PGA before winning the U.S. Open. It’s worth listing that because he seems more often referenced as pro golf’s pre-eminent YouTube presence — but it’s clear DeChambeau still has plenty of game. What’s odd is he didn’t finish first or second at any LIV events last year; he’s been saving his best for the biggest. Perhaps he’s been taking notes from his ex-nemesis Koepka.

1. Rory McIlroy. If you’re a golf fan you can probably recite this paragraph with your eyes closed: McIlroy hasn’t won a major in over a decade but has won everything else in the meantime. He possesses incredible longevity but also owns deep heartbreak. He remains just one Masters away from the career grand slam. This year seems to be set up perfectly for him, too: he’s entering with terrific form and plenty of winning mojo, with titles at Pebble Beach and TPC Sawgrass. Now all that’s left is the pesky task of actually playing the tournament in the fewest number of shots…

A compelling cast of characters at the year’s most compelling tournament? That’s golf stuff I like.

WINNERS

Who won the week?

Brian Harman won the Valero Texas Open, fending off challengers on a brutal Sunday for his fourth career PGA Tour victory and his first since the 2023 Open Championship.

“Just knowing that there’s some good golf left in there,” Harman said, asked what was so satisfying about the win. “You know, I’m 38, I’m not 25 anymore. I know that I’m getting a little grayer, so you start looking at like, man, how many more chances do I have at Augusta, how many more chances do I have at a U.S. Open, and all the things that you want to do.”

Madelene Sagstrom won the LPGA Tour’s T-Mobile Match Play at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas in a 1-up final victory over Lauren Coughlin. Sagstrom won Nos. 13 and 16 to flip from 1 down to 1 up and tied the final two holes to close out the win, her first on tour since 2020.

“I mean, I’m exhausted and I bet Lauren is exhausted,” Sagstrom said after playing four 18-hole matches on the weekend. “I just kind of dug deep and was like, oh, well, hopefully it’s not too many holes left. It’s just amazing.”

Carla Bernat Escuder won the Augusta National Women’s Am, continuing a tradition of Spanish excellence with a final-round four-under 68 at Augusta National to hold off hard-charging 16-year-old Asterisk Talley and defending champion Lottie Woad, among others. Post-round she suggested that perhaps a celebratory tattoo was in order.

“I was thinking maybe the flower of Augusta, but I need to decide on that,” she said. “It’s a big decision.”

Marc Leishman won LIV Golf’s Miami event, holding off a star-studded leaderboard in tough conditions at Trump Doral. It was his first individual victory on LIV, propelled by a bogey-free Sunday 68 that left him just ahead of Masters champs Charl Schwartzel (five under, good for second) and Sergio Garcia (four under, which left him third). Green jacket winners Phil Mickelson (sixth), Patrick Reed (T7) and Jon Rahm (T9) also showed.

Jeremy Gandon won the Korn Ferry Tour’s Club Car Championship at the Landings, making birdie on the first playoff hole to claim his first win on the circuit and climb inside the top 250 in the world.

And Angel Cabrera won the James Hardie Pro Football Hall of Fame Invitational, his first win on the PGA Tour Champions. The win comes in the wake of Cabrera’s multi-year stint in prison for domestic abuse; he expressed his remorse in a recent interview. Cabrera will tee it up at Augusta National this week.

ALSO-WINNERS

They didn’t win but hey, pretty close.

How many pros have finished inside the top six in each of their last three PGA Tour starts? I can only think of one: Bud Cauley, who finished T5 in San Antonio. Above him, Ryan Gerard finished solo second, the best result of his Tour career, thanks to a three-under Sunday. Mav McNealy jumped into the top 10 in the world for the first time in his career thanks to a T3. And Andrew Novak finished T3 alongside him after going shot-for-shot with Harman for much of the day before faltering late, missing in some key spots and leaving crucial putts short.

SHORT HITTERS

Five deep Masters sleepers. Also, Corey Conners is gonna finish top 10.

Let’s start here: I do not claim to be good at this. Also I don’t think any of these guys will win. But if you’re putting together a team of longshots who might crack the top 20, here you go:

Daniel Berger (110-1): Gained strokes with his irons in each of his last six starts. Six top-30s in those six starts. Seems to be back to an impressively high baseline.

Justin Rose (110-1): Feast or famine for Rosie at recent majors. Two top-six results and two missed cuts last year. He’s been all over the place this year, too, with two top-eights, three missed cuts and a T47 in six starts. If we get the locked-in version, he could do something special.

Phil Mickelson (120-1): When I first sketched this out Mickelson was available at 190-1, but some big-time Lefty action has now propelled to 120-1 after contending at LIV Miami.

Keegan Bradley (125-1): Why is this number so high? Bradley has a reasonable track record at Augusta, he’s in reasonable form and he has a tendency to win big events. I’m as big a Bradley homer as there is, so take this with a large grain of New England snowplow salt. But I’d rather have Keegs than most of the other guys at similar numbers.

Matt McCarty (500-1): This is a real shot in the dark, but McCarty finished top 20 in tough tests at the Players and Valspar. Plus he’s a lefty. Plus he’s got a chipper attitude. I dunno — but he’s 500-1!

ONE SWING THOUGHT

From Brian Harman:

How often is it that we hear winners talk about something they did differently that week that freed them up, gave them a different look or feel, removed pressure, etc.? Viktor Hovland said he almost skipped Valspar but decided to play last-minute and won. We’ve seen guys change caddies, change grips, change swing thoughts. And this week Brian Harman said he switched putters earlier this week when, as he described it, “a putter rep just handed it to me and said, ‘try this one.'” So he did.

Harman had noticed looking at 2024 statistics that he was way down in terms of putting from 10-20 feet. He was still solid from short range but wasn’t making many in the mid-range.

“Picked that one up on Tuesday this week, it felt really good and it rolls nice, just kind of freed me up a little bit,” Harman said. Just don’t ask him the specs. “It’s a TaylorMade of some sort. I’m not sure what all the letters and numbers on the bottom of it are, but it’s good.”

RYDER CUP WATCH

Harman and the Danes.

This week’s Masters may provide our first massive shakeup to the Ryder Cup rankings. But this week brought two intriguing possibilities to mind:

1. Could Brian Harman make his second consecutive U.S. team? (Plus the 2024 Presidents Cup team.) Harman wasn’t part of the conversation until this week, but he jumped to No. 7 in the team standings — and a victory has a way of making all your other top-20s look a little better, too. He went 2-2 in Rome in 2023.

2. How many Danes could we have at Bethpage?! We’ve covered the possibilities of the Højgaard twins making the squad, particularly with Rasmus sitting currently at No. 3. But there’s also Niklas Norgaard in eighth and, after a T5 on Sunday, Thorbjørn Olesen in 12th, not to mention Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen in 15th. There are plenty of guys who seem like “locks” for Team Europe — McIlroy, Hatton, Lowry, Fleetwood, Rahm, Åberg, Hovland — but it’ll be fascinating to see how many of the rest of ’em come from Denmark.

ONE BIG QUESTION

Are you ready for major championship season?

Somehow we has arrived at what will ultimately feel like a sprint of a major season. Do you have a good couch setup for the week? A proper TV? Meetings canceled? Masters pool arranged? Azalea ingredients prepped and ready? Do you like to watch the Masters alone, in a small group, at a party? Do you like to play golf the morning of, to get in the mood? Get some morning exercise in to properly earn your TV time? This is “one” big question, so I’ll leave you with this: Do you have a plan?

ONE THING TO WATCH

Rory at 19.

It’s worth revisiting this old clip from a Shane O’Donoghue interview with 19-year-old Rory McIlroy at Augusta National — including footage from the curly-haired Ulsterman cruising down Magnolia Lane. One answer stood out, because I’m sure it’s the attitude McIlroy would love to channel this year:

“It is a big of a balancing act, because you’re so excited to be here,” McIlroy said. “But I’m going to try to take that excitement and turn it into good golf. Just try and be excited, and if I hit a bad shot, not to worry because I’m at the Masters. It’s a great position to be in and hopefully if I can keep my emotions in check it should be a good week.”

If I hit a bad shot, not to worry, because I’m at the Masters. Good stuff.

NEWS FROM SEATTLE

Monday Finish HQ.

I’m on a redeye to Atlanta and will be on site all week at Augusta National — something so cool that I’m trying to never take it for granted. I’m working on a calorie consumption plan, given the outrageous media-center dining setup. But hopefully plenty of trekking ’round the course will help offset some 38 chicken sandwiches.

We’ll see you here all week, from Augusta! We have some fun stuff planned — stay tuned via GOLF.com, or find me on Instagram or X / Twitter.

Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.