25 revelations from the PGA Tour’s first week | Monday Finish
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Welcome back to the Monday Finish, where we’ve finally settled on a New Year’s Resolution: Play more golf! Achievable goals are important. To the news…
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GOLF STUFF I LIKE
Little changes.
Once LIV arrived in 2022, pro golf’s “free agency” went from zero to 60. Players’ decisions to leave for the breakaway league were massively consequential for themselves and for others, collectively sending the sport careening down an uncertain path.
But golfers’ offseason decisions weren’t always so momentous and their return to competition used to mean something simpler. We’d arrive at Kapalua the first week of January and find out about little offseason tweaks top pros had made: coaching changes, gear changes, apparel changes. Less consequential, less exciting and less earth-quaking than LIV departures. But kinda fun.
With a relatively quiet LIV hot-stove season (thus far, at least) this week’s news cycle felt like something of a throwback. And while golf probably could use a bit more juice — I’m not sure NFL fans were thinking much about the Sentry — we still learned plenty coming out of golf’s offseason. Some good. Some bad. Some sartorial.
Let’s buzz through 25 things we learned in Week 1.
We’d better start with World No. 1, which also means starting with the bad news: Scottie Scheffler missed the Sentry and announced on Monday that he’ll miss the American Express, too (let’s call this Learning No. 1), shifting his comeback timeline back to, at best, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Whatever happened with Scheffler’s Christmas dinner-prep injury was clearly fairly serious and/or extremely unlucky; let’s hope he’s taking extra time out of an abundance of caution and this isn’t something that’ll linger.
Max Homa probably made the biggest offseason changes. He returned with Cobra clubs in his hands (2). With Puma shoes on his feet (3). With Lululemon clothes, head to toe (4). And with a new coach on call, John Scott Rattan, director of instruction at Congressional, who has been helping Homa battle a tendency to get stuck. (5). Homa even made waves by hiring Jordan Spieth‘s longtime caddie Michael Greller for the week (6); the term of their arrangement wasn’t immediately clear but it sounded like a potential one-off because Homa’s usual caddie Joe Greiner was at home dealing with a family situation. Homa shot at least four under par each day and 19 under par for the week, which somehow left him just T26 in a 59-player field. These guys are good.
Viktor Hovland was the next biggest newsmaker. For the second consecutive season Hovland arrived in Hawaii with news about his swing coach, Joe Mayo; he confirmed the pair have gone their separate ways (7) after reuniting midway through last season. That wasn’t the only fracture Hovland reported, though — he also broke his pinkie toe (8) after what he described as a jet-lagged kick of his hotel-room bedframe. He soldiered his way to a 15-under-par week that somehow left him T36. Lost amidst other apparel shuffling was the news that Hovland and controversial outfitter J Lindeberg have agreed to a three-year extension (9); let’s hope they continue to brighten fields of otherwise same-y dressers.
Let’s stay in the apparel space for a moment and acknowledge that Jason Day and Malbon are back for Year 2 (10); after debuting golf’s baggiest pants last year at Kapalua, Day shone in what could be described as “athletic scrubs chic” on Sunday this year. Hell yeah. Nobody looked freer on Maui than this man in these clothes.
Akshay Bhatia announced that he’s signed with Travis Mathew ahead of the new season (11) with the first mustard stain-themed clothing release I can remember.
There were a whole bundle of pros putting new clubs into play, highlighted by a bunch of new drivers, which our Jack Hirsh compiled here (12). But it’s likely no single club change drew more attention than Hideki Matsuyama‘s winning putter (13), which was inspired by a mysterious somebody.
Matsuyama’s center-shafted Scotty Cameron prototype was just one of four putters he’d brought along for tryouts (14). This one will probably stick around, given Matsuyama just went further under par than any player in PGA Tour history. But with Hideki you truly never know.
One reason Matsuyama’s record could be safe-ish? Talk intensified this week that Kapalua’s fifth hole should changed from a par-5 to a par-4 (15). This seems like such an obvious change it’s actually incredible it hasn’t happened yet. Need proof? It’s been a half-decade of tournament golf (!) since Matsuyama last made 5 on the par 5.
The hole averaged 4.12 strokes for the week. That’s a par 4. Kapalua is a par 72. Done.
What else did we learn? Newly minuted PGA Tour winner Maverick McNealy is an equipment free agent (16), an increasingly popular move among top pros who can earn what would be a year’s-worth of endorsement money with a few saved strokes here or there. We also learned that Mav credits his brother-turned-caddie Scout with helping him think big (17).
“I just felt like the progression is you get your card, you keep your card, you start making a bunch of cuts, and then you start finishing in the top 10, start playing in the final group, couple chances to win, and then you win,” Mav said. Scout wants him to skip to step 7 or 8. “He says, ‘There’s no reason why you can’t win any given week.’ I tend to think pretty linearly, and he’s just like, ‘just go set your sights high.'”
Collin Morikawa, who would go on to finish runner-up at a preposterous 32 under par, is working on his mental game, too. He’s working hard on what he calls a “leave-it-all-out-there” mindset (18).
“If I looked at it right now, it’s, like, yeah, we’ve got 20 more events for the rest of the season, you can be ho-hum about it,” Morikawa said. “But that’s not the mindset, right? It’s, ‘I’m going to focus on every shot and I’m going to put in as much as I can into every shot.’ And you look back at the greats, like, they did that. You look back at Tiger, like, he did that every single week.”
Let’s learn something from Tiger Woods, then. Let’s go back to an excerpt from a Time interview on his focus (19).
“I get so worn out mentally because I’m grinding that hard,” Woods told Time a few years ago. “Golf is, what, five hours? You’re trying to tell me that I can’t go out there and focus that hard for five hours, when I’ve got 19 other hours to recover? That’s how I look at it. So I’m going to give it absolutely everything I can, everything I have, for this five-hour window. Let’s go. After that, hey, we’re done.”
Will Zalatoris is looking to make tweaks in three key areas. There’s his body, which he acknowledged has let him down in recent years, especially when he’s had to play several weeks in a row. He gained 19 pounds over the last several months, he said (20), and feels as good as he ever has.
There’s his mind, too; Zalatoris is chasing an elusive, minimalist feeling (21) from several years ago that involves playing over tinkering or perfecting.
“I want to just get back to playing the game,” he said. “I go back to COVID, when things were shut down, and the only thing we could do is just go play and carry our bag, and that was really, really beneficial for me moving up off of Korn Ferry Tour and then eventually almost winning the Masters. So that’s the recipe. I don’t need to be sitting on the range hitting 300 balls trying to find it, I need to go back out there and play the game.”
And there his flat stick, the broomstick-style long putter he adopted last season and has been looking to get comfier with. He cited one drill in particular (22) that he hopes will get him in the mindset of making more putts.
“Thirty putts,” he said. “Five 10-footers, five 12-footers, five [from] 15, five [from] 17, five [from] 20 and I got to make nine out of 30, and do it until you complete it.”
We learned that Tom Hoge, who blitzed out to an opening 9-under 64 and finished T8, is a new father (23) as of December.
We learned that Justin Thomas is going coach-free this year, ready to play “pissed-off golf” after last year’s season wasn’t enough to make the Presidents Cup team (24).
And we learned something interesting from defending champion Chris Kirk, who described the biggest change on Tour (25) during his tenure.
“The PGA Tour agronomy is just insane these days,” he said. “From my first couple years on Tour I remember there were a couple places where the greens would maybe be a little thin or fairways were a little thin or maybe someplace lost the greens or something. Like, we show up every single week and the golf course is absolutely immaculate every single week. So I don’t know what’s different with PGA Tour agronomy, but they have made some huge advances.”
Little changes that make big-time differences — that’s golf stuff I like.
WINNERS
Who won the week?
Hideki Matsuyama won the Sentry at a PGA Tour-record 35 under par. There was only one OWGR event this week and, excluding Davis Riley’s WD, the entire field finished at 3 under par or better. That means every top pro in the world is at even par or better for 2025. Truly living under par.
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NOT-WINNERS
Birdie-makers, though.
Ludvig Aberg seems healthy; he finished T5. That’s good.
Sungjae Im seems like he’s flushing; he finished third. Also good.
And Collin Morikawa seems primed for a big-time year after finishing runner up at Kapalua; he played high-level golf all of 2024 despite going winless and picked up right where he left off. That’s good, too.
At the bottom of the leaderboard, it wasn’t a good week for Davis Riley, who withdrew after nine holes on Sunday (before his WD he’d gone 73-80-74 and then had a bizarre five-bogey, four-birdie front nine in the final round). It’s been a rough stretch for Riley, who hasn’t finished better than T38 since his win last May.
SHORT HITTERS
5 intriguing golf stories, in brief.
1. Our Michael Bamberger wrote about the life of Steve DiMeglio, the longtime USA Today writer who died last week after bringing an inspiring fight to his cancer battle.
2. Our James Colgan wrote about visiting the TGL arena ahead of Tuesday’s league debut and explored what success might look like — or failure.
3. Tiger Woods won the Player Impact Program (PIP) in what’s expected to be its final edition. That’s a nifty $10 million payday for Woods, who played just five times in 2024 and made just one cut but, well, he’s still Tiger Woods. Scottie Scheffler finished second.
4. Phil Mickelson has big plans for his new YouTube channel, including a match series with Grant Horvat, a backyard instruction series, conversations and more.
5. Here are nine new or renovated public courses that belong on your bucket list come 2025.
ONE SWING THOUGHT
Justin Thomas on his putting woes.
“I think I’ve become too reliant on help the last handful of years and, yeah, I’m solo right now,” Thomas said ahead of the Sentry. “I just want to — I’m a great putter. I know I am. I’ve made a lot of extremely clutch putts and big putts in my career, and talent doesn’t leave your body, it doesn’t just go away. It’s just getting the confidence back and doing the right things to where the confidence is there when I’m out playing tournaments, and that’s what I’ve been working on to get to that place.”
ONE BIG QUESTION
How will TGL’s debut go?
It’s easy to be skeptical of the TGL and it’s easy to make jokes about its legitimacy. I’ll continue to do both. But I’m also intrigued by just how different this could be, and if I’m putting on my optimist’s hat it’s for one reason: the more time players spend in the arena the more they seem to believe in the concept. The tech and the pace and the competition. From Brody Miller at The Athletic:
“I wasn’t sure about it, but now I think it’s freaking awesome,” Max Homa said.
“Going in made me more excited,” Schauffele said. “I didn’t know what to expect, but there’s a lot of wow factor. I don’t feel like I’m easily impressed, but going in I could see how they think this is going to be really special.”
The question, then: What will Tuesday’s first match even look like?
ONE THING TO WATCH
Go inside a dramatic Curtis Cup on the R&A’s YouTube channel.
NEWS FROM SEATTLE
Monday Finish HQ.
We at the Monday Finish now have a rooting interest in this week’s PGA Tour event.
This Monday’s Sony Open qualifier had particular significance; given upcoming Tour changes there won’t be any open qualifying at this event going forward. So who were the four final qualifiers? Argentinian pro Alejandro Tosti made it through as medalist with a 64. Veteran Tour pro Kevin Streelman shot 65 to earn his 463rd PGA Tour start. Korn Ferry Tour rookie Gavin Cohen shot 65, too; he’ll make his first start. And the final spot went to RJ Manke, a Washingtonian who played at Pepperdine (alongside Tour pros like Sahith Theegala, Joe Highsmith and William Mouw) before spending his final year at the University of Washington. He’s stayed in Washington post-graduation and occasionally beats up on me in some home rounds. Hopefully that’s prep enough.
Hit ’em straight, RJ! And the rest of you, too. In 2025 we’re keeping the ball in front of us.
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Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.
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Dylan Dethier
Golf.com Editor
Dylan Dethier is a senior writer for GOLF Magazine/GOLF.com. The Williamstown, Mass. native joined GOLF in 2017 after two years scuffling on the mini-tours. Dethier is a graduate of Williams College, where he majored in English, and he’s the author of 18 in America, which details the year he spent as an 18-year-old living from his car and playing a round of golf in every state.