Stories of the Year in golf — from equipment to movies to Rory McIlroy’s Masters

The past 12 months had a little of everything — a career Grand Slam, Ryder Cup chaos and so much more. With 2026 on the horizon, our writers look back at the most memorable moments from 2025 and explain why they mattered. Here are our top 15 stories of the year that was.

No. 15 — The zero-torque putter movement 

After J.J. Spaun’s 64-foot bomb sealed his U.S. Open victory and catapulted him into the international golf spotlight, he tossed his L.A.B. Golf DF3 putter in the air. Somewhat fittingly, the putter seemed to stay square the whole time.

Spaun’s breakthrough victory at Oakmont highlighted the major shift both at golf’s highest levels and in the recreational game toward “zero-torque” putters, as the win was the first major title for a player using a “zero-torque” model.

More and more low-torque putters are sold every day and Odyssey’s VP of Product Strategy, Jacob Davidson, told GOLF we may be seeing the creation of a “game-improvement” putter category, like there is for other club categories.

“Maybe, just maybe, for the first time, we’re starting to see the bifurcation of putting styles emerge for everyday golfers, and the best players in the world,” Davidson said. — Jack Hirsh

No. 14 — ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ takes golf world by storm 

The budget was eye-popping, the star power blinding, and the entertainment value … debatable. 

But enough about Capital One’s The Match.

The real golf-themed pop-culture extravaganza of the year — one that actually drew a substantial audience—was a cinematic sequel that proudly leaned into its own inanity while pulling every lever in the modern era’s multi-platform marketing machine.

Admit it. You watched “Happy Gilmore 2”. — Josh Sens

No. 13 — Joaquin Niemann’s big 2025 (and crucial 2026) 

Twenty-twenty-five was a year of change for LIV Golf. There was change at the top and change to the format. But on the course, the breakaway league saw one of its stars dominate the 54-hole circuit.

Joaquin Niemann won. Then won again and again and again and again. The 27-year-old Chilean won five times in 2025, from Adelaide to the UK, and even had Jon Rahm making bold claims about his place in the professional golf hierarchy.

“In my mind, nowadays in golf, due to various circumstances, I think Joaquin is severely underrated,” Rahm said after Niemann’s win at LIV UK in July. “He’s one of the best players in the world, and he keeps proving it. … I don’t know the numbers. I don’t know. My guess is obviously it’s majors, events outside of LIV that may be pushing him back. It’s not a true reflection. He is undoubtedly a top-10 player in the world right now. I’m saying that conservatively.” — Josh Schrock

No. 12 — J.J. Spaun slays Oakmont 

It was raining, and crouching green-side, my battle to keep my notebook dry while simultaneously scribbling thoughts on it had just begun. Eighty feet away from me, J.J. Spaun had bigger things to worry about. Spaun faced a 64-footer for birdie on Oakmont’s par-4 18th with a U.S. Open trophy on the line.

Make and he wins, but no one was expecting that — not in this weather and not from the parking lot. But a good lag putt here was a likely par and one-shot win over Robert MacIntyre, who was waiting in scoring.

You know what happened next. He drained it. But do you remember what happened elsewhere? While I was jockeying for position among waterlogged media members and as fans around the green focused their gaze on Spaun’s celebration, some of the best moments in the aftermath of the victory came elsewhere. — Josh Berhow

No. 11 — The Internet Invitational 

There’s no way around it: If you’d like to understand the year in golf, you’re going to have to familiarize yourself with the questionable alarm clock habits of a failed professional golfer.

The journey from a year filled with possibility to an oversleeping controversy that defined golf’s current entanglement with the internet begins with Luke Kwon, former PGA Tour pro and current YouTube golf star.

Kwon is one of many main characters in arguably the story of the year in golf: YouTube. And, in undoubtedly the story of the year on YouTube — the Internet Invitational — Kwon played an even more important role: the heel.

Every good story needs a villain, and evidently, so does every good made-for-the-internet, half-reality-TV-show, half-influencer golf tournament. In failing to make his tee time for the opening session of the Internet Invitational, Kwon was the spark that lit the internet wildfire that became the Internet Invitational. — James Colgan

No. 10 — Jeeno Thitikul’s record year 

At the season-ending CME Globe Tour Championship, Thitikul asserted herself as the latest queen of the LPGA Tour, cruising to a four-stroke victory to win the $4 million prize for the second year in a row. Her three wins weren’t the only thing that set her apart from her peers. She was named the Rolex Player of the Year and won the Vare Trophy for the second time. Thitikul’s consistency also earned her some impressive entries in the history books, including a new record scoring average of 68.68 (which beat Annika’s Sorenstam’s 2002 record by 0.02) and a new single-season earnings record, with $7,578,330. Thitikul finished the season with 14 top-10 finishes in 20 starts, and plenty of perspective.

“I remember the day that I came to Dallas after the Kroger,” she said. “I have the ice pack put in my eyes because I cried so bad. That’s I remember. And then I willingly took a picture holding like this. It’s weird. But I just want to reminding myself that the day that you reach to there or the day that you like, you know, the happiness in your life, this day will come definitely. Like the sadness days will come.

“So just, you know, kind of like whatever you had in your career doesn’t define who you are and doesn’t define like who I am as a Jeeno, too.” — Jess Marksbury

No. 9 — Tiger Woods’ next role 

One of the oddities — and, from a scenery and lodging perspective, one of of the real joys — of covering professional golf is that the sport’s most iconic figure reliably speaks once per year, at a relatively chill, limited-field golf tournament in a quiet corner of the Bahamas.

And so the week after Thanksgiving I flew to Nassau, where (with all due respect to Hideki Matsuyama) the main event of the Hero World Challenge was Tiger Woods’ pre-tournament press conference, his first public give-and-take in months. He showed up two minutes early, stayed for a half-hour and gave us a window into how he envisions his future as it relates to professional golf. He’s still recovering from another back surgery, and he hinted towards another playing comeback — but for the first time in Woods’ extensive injury history the assembled media seemed just as interested in his golf-related activities away from the course. Woods was sharp and measured. He connected his past to his future. And he was, for him, unusually forthcoming. The line I keep coming back to is this one:

“I know I’m not really saying a whole lot but I’m trying to say as much as I possibly can because there’s so many moving parts to this and it changes all the time,” Woods said, speaking on the PGA Tour’s future. — Dylan Dethier

No. 8 — Tommy Fleetwood breaks through 

Would Tommy Fleetwood have made our “Biggest Golf Moments of 2025” list … if he hadn’t won?

The argument is at least compelling, should character be your compass. But thanks to a long-awaited victory at the Tour Championship, we’ll never have to ask that question. While victory shows what you’re made of, defeat tests it, and maybe no one this year was sturdier in misery’s face than Fleetwood … only to bring everyone along for the ride as he summited his own mountaintop. — Nick Piastowski.

No. 7 — The birth of TGL 

Arriving early in 2025 was something so new and so bold the it seemed everyone was paying close attention: the launch night of the mixed-reality, simulator golf league known as TGL.

We had to see it for our own eyes to understand why 24 of the best golfers in the world were interested in taking part, so GOLF sent two reporters down to Florida to check it out first hand. There were some bumps and bruises along the way for TGL. Like getting the live insights from mic’d up players to the actual fans in the stands, not just the people watching at home. TGL likes to think they’ve made important adjustments to make Season 2 even better than the first. We’ll watch to see if they can live up to those claims. For now, here’s a good reminder of what launch night was like. — Sean Zak

No. 6 — Keegan Bradley’s big decision 

When the PGA of America surprisingly tapped Keegan Bradley as the 2025 Ryder Cup captain in the summer of 2024, the writing was on the wall for the dilemma he was about to face.

“I grew up wanting to play Ryder Cups. I grew up wanting to fight alongside these guys, and it broke my heart not to play. It really did,” Bradley said. “But ultimately I was chosen to do a job. I was chosen to be a captain.”

But Bradley’s decision not to play wasn’t the end of the story. It was just the beginning. — Josh Schrock

No. 5 — Europe wins another Ryder Cup

The winning Ryder Cup team’s Sunday-evening press conference is always a lively affair — especially so when the Europeans prevail, as they have now in 11 of the last 15 editions, including at the 2025 matches at Bethpage Black, where they were led for a second time by captain Luke Donald.

Thing is, though, the Europeans’ winning formula — both for captain and team — isn’t a secret, at least not anymore. They have cohesion. They have continuity. And they have buy-in that brings the guys together in a way that the Americans have been unable to replicate.

“The badge and the boys,” is how Justin Rose summed up his team’s brotherhood in the wake of Europe’s 15-13 victory. “That’s all that matters, honestly.” — Alan Bastable

No. 4 — Bethpage chaos

I’d spent six years counting down the days to the Ryder Cup at Bethpage. The biggest show in golf was coming to my home course, not far from my hometown, at a venue I thought represented everything good and decent about the sport. It was supposed to be one of the highlights of my career, and it’d taken all of six hours on Saturday afternoon for a group of chuds who couldn’t tell the Red Course from a stop sign to tarnish the place’s reputation for good.

The truth is that the Bethpage Ryder Cup wasn’t a bug in the system. It was a feature of pro golf that has been allowed to fester for too long. The exact shape of the problem varies by location, but its general dimensions never change: A heavily oversaturated hospitality environment; an overpriced ticketing system; a “tournament experience” encouraging chaos and consumption; a security strategy overwhelmed by the logistical challenges of golf; a crowd addicted to social media and a small group of bad actors stoked by the uniquely antisocial instincts of achieving viral fame. — James Colgan

No. 3 — Scottie Scheffler dominated (again)

We by no means want to diminish Scottie Scheffler’s 2025 accomplishments, of which there were several. Instead, we wish to make sense of them. And that leads us to ask:

Did Scottie Scheffler’s best moment of the year come in a press conference?

The moment came in mid-July, at a press conference ahead of the Open Championship — which he went on to win for his fourth major title. Two months earlier, he won his third major, at the PGA Championship, and his successes made the Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson ask: What was the longest amount of time that Scheffler had celebrated a win, and, opposite of that, what was his most crushing loss? 

Scheffler then talked for about five minutes. You may have already heard his answer, but it remains a lasting token of his brilliance displayed in 2025. — Nick Piastowski

No. 2 — Golf’s new sheriffs

Golf fans would be forgiven for rolling their eyes at another year gone by without meaningful progress on reunification in the men’s game or greater rating metrics from the women’s game. On those fronts, 2025 wasn’t sexy at all. But the year yielded far more momentum toward actionable, tangible, meaningful change in pro golf than it appeared. And why? The answer is simple: Leadership.

It would normally feel wrong to rank executive hires as one of the biggest stories of 2025, but there is some trust included in that lofty ranking. Pro golf’s previous generation of leadership changed many things, but its final stretch at the helm was marked by a period of stagnancy — the battle lines drawn, the rules written. The months since those leaders were replaced have revealed a renewed sense of vigor around reimagining golf as we know it and as we watch it. Sometimes, new leadership can be about a lot more than changing the drapes. — Sean Zak

No. 1 — Rory McIlroy’s Grand Slam triumph

The waiting really is the hardest part, and the thing that made Rory McIlroy’s win at Augusta in April the single-best moment of the golf year is that millions of us, alongside McIlroy and most especially his parents, had been waiting forever for the moment. We were in the waiting line for years, months, days, hours, minutes and, finally, excruciating seconds.

The putt was rolling at 7:16:22 and 7:16:23. You could hear a ball marker drop. At 7:16:24 it fell. Rory’s ball fell to the bottom of the hole. Rory his own wee self fell to the ground, the knees of his white pants resting on the green turf of the 18th green. He heaved air. Rose watched. McIlroy’s caddie, Harry Diamond, watched. Nantz and Faldo watched. His parents, his wife, their daughter, his fans, his frenemies, his employees, his fans in green coats and his fans across the world, cheering, stamping, fiving, hands in the air, ’cause they cared too much. We all cared too much. For about a decade, we cared too much. — Michael Bamberger