Everything You Need to Know for the 2025 Golf Season

Scottie Scheffler enters as the man to beat, but it should be another unpredictable year in men's golf. Bob Harig breaks down the season ahead.

Featured players: DeChambeau, Scheffler and McIlroy / USA Today

Although golf at the professional level never truly takes a deep breath, the PGA Tour did attempt to leave our consciousness for a few weeks, concluding official events just before Thanksgiving, while the DP World Tour kept tumbling along right up until last weekend.

Now PGA Tour golf is back, the official variety, as the annual stop at Kapalua on Maui signals the start of a new year at the Sentry, a signature event for winners and the top 30 from the final 2024 FedEx Cup.

Scottie Scheffler is out following hand surgery after a stunning Christmas-dinner accident.  But defending champion Chris Kirk and a slew of others are in, including Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay and Justin Thomas.

Rory McIlroy is not there, as he plans to begin his year in the Middle East later in January.

U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau is also not in Hawaii, shining light again on the continuing divide in the men’s game that will see another year begin without resolution to the on-going negotiations between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Public Investment Fund.

That discord is at some point, hopefully, to be worked out in the coming year, which will see the PGA Tour operate mostly as it has, with a similar schedule to 2024 but a pending big change for 2026 that will see a larger group of players competing for fewer spots a year from now.

Here is a look at the 2025 season that begins Thursday with the first round of the Sentry.

The Schedule

It is largely the same as 2024, with the main FedEx Cup portion running through the playoffs and concluding with the Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta in late August. The former Wells Fargo Championship is now known as the Truist Championship and will be played the week prior to the PGA Championship at the Philadelphia Cricket Club in a one-year move as the PGA will be played at the tournament’s annual home, Quail Hollow. There are 38 events in the FedEx portion, five of which are opposite events.

There are then seven official events in the fall beginning in September, and the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black is also that month.

The Signature Events

They begin this week with the Sentry, which is the outlier of these eight events. It includes only the winners from last year as well as the top 30 in the final PGA Tour FedEx standings.

In February, there are two, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am followed two weeks later by the Genesis Invitational. The Arnold Palmer Invitational follows in March. The RBC Heritage is the week after the Masters. The Truist Championship precedes the PGA Championship. The Memorial Tournament is back to two weeks prior to the U.S. Open. And the Travelers is the week following the U.S. Open.

The seven fields following the Sentry are now required to be a minimum of 72 players. They comprise the top 50 from last year’s FedEx Cup standings, any tournament winners from the current year, the top 30 OWGR at the time of the year, the top 10 in the season-long FedEx Cup points standings as well as the top-five in the non signature events preceding the tournament called the AON 5.

The players who finished 51st to 60th in the final FedEx fall standings get starts at Pebble Beach and Genesis.

The tournaments also have four sponsor exemptions.

The “legacy” events – Genesis (Tiger Woods), Arnold Palmer and Memorial (Jack Nicklaus) have a 36-hole cut to the top 50 and ties and anyone within 10 shots of the lead. The other five signature events do not have a 36-hole cut.

In a new exemption category, Tiger Woods can play in any signature event and he is simply added to the field, thus not taking a spot from a qualifier or one of the tournament’s sponsor invites.

The purses for signature events are $20 million.

The LIV Golf Schedule

It is still a work in progress. LIV has announced 10 of its 14 events, including the first four of 2025, all to be played in international markets. Curiously, several of LIV’s events are played the same week as the biggest PGA Tour events. That isn’t so much an issue for international events in far different time zones. But it is interesting that LIV will play U.S. tournaments at the same time as some of the bigger PGA Tour events. It’s Chicago and Indianapolis events are up against the first two FedEx Cup playoff events.

LIV’s schedule begins with a Feb. 6-8 event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. That is the same week as the PGA Tour’s Waste Management Phoenix Open and also Super Bowl weekend. The LIV event ends on Saturday. The following week LIV goes to its most popular event in Adelaide, Australia. The same week as the Genesis Invitational.

In March, tournaments in Hong Kong and Singapore are the same weeks as the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players Championship.

LIV is expected to announce a U.S. based event the week prior to the Masters. And it has yet to announce where and when its season-ending Team Championship will be played.

The Man to Beat

Scheffler set himself apart from the rest in 2024. He won seven times on the PGA Tour, the most since Tiger Woods did so in 2007. He also accumulated more Official World Ranking points than any player ever not named Woods.

Among his victories were the Masters and four Signature events – Arnold Palmer, RBC Heritage, Memorial and Travelers Championship. He also captured the Players Championship as well as the Tour Championship. For good measure, he shot a final-round 62 to win the Olympic Gold medal and then defended his title at the Hero World Challenge.

It is difficult to envision improving on that—first he will need to recover from his December hand injury—but Scheffler surely wants better results in the majors. His tie for 41st at the U.S. Open was his worst result of any tournament and his tie for seventh at the British Open only saw him on the fringe of contention. His tie for eighth at the PGA was actually remarkable considering the arrest that week and all that went on, and who knows if the result might have been better had he not endured that?

Scheffler will be defending his Masters title where he has won twice but he’s not played at Quail Hollow—site of the PGA—the last two years. You’d think Oakmont would be great for a ball-striking machine such as Scheffler. Getting over the frustrations of links golf is his next quest when he heads to Portrush for the Open.

The Challengers

Xander Schauffele would have had a player-of-the-year season in almost any other year by winning two majors. Such was the dominance of Scheffler that Schauffele’s wins at the PGA and the Open fell short. Rory McIlroy was a consistent contender but was wounded by his one-stroke defeat to Bryson DeChambeau at the U.S. Open, where he was unable to add another major title to the four he accumulated now more than 10 years ago. McIlroy, again, will get plenty of attention headed to Augusta, where he will attempt to complete the career Grand Slam. Collin Morikawa was a frequent contender without winning, and so was Patrick Cantlay. Justin Thomas is looking for a resurgence after more than two years without a win. Jordan Spieth returns from wrist surgery. It was the year of Scottie. Can anyone knock him down a peg?

The Majors

The Masters returns to its annual home at Augusta National, which was ravaged by Hurricane Helene in late September. Expect everything to look great, as usual, but there are bound to be some holes in the trees throughout the course.

The PGA Championship will be played at Quail Hollow in Charlotte for the second time. It is where Justin Thomas won in 2017. The choice remains odd given the annual PGA Tour stop at the venue as well as the 2022 Presidents Cup. The good news is a May date promises to be far more comfortable than it was in August eight years ago.

The U.S. Open returns to venerable Oakmont (Pa.) Country Club, site of nine previous U.S. Opens, the most of any venue. Generally regarded as one of the toughest courses in the country, it has produced its share of big-name winners over the years, including the first of Jack Nicklaus’ 18 majors in 1962. Johnny Miller set a major championship record in his 1973 U.S. Open victory by shooting 63, a score that wasn’t better in a major until 2017. Dustin Johnson won the last U.S. Open played at Oakmont in 2016.

After only a six-year wait, the British Open is going back to Royal Portrush in North Ireland, marking just the third time the championship will be played outside of Great Britain. It’s quick return is a testament to its popularity in 2019, when huge crowds ventured to the home area of the likes of Rory McIlroy, Darren Clarke and Graeme McDowell. Shane Lowry was the popular champion six years ago.

The Playoffs

The FedEx Cup playoffs follow the regular season and will again see the three tournament lineup of the FedEx St. Jude Championship, the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship.

The FedEx tournament returns to sweltering Memphis, where Hideki Matsuyama won in 2024. The top 70 in FedEx Cup points qualify.

The BMW, which typically moves around, heads to Caves Valley in Maryland. That’s where Patrick Cantlay defeated Bryson DeChambeau in a riveting playoff in 2021. Keegan Bradley won the 2024 tournament at Castle Pines in Colorado. The top 50 in FedEx Cup points qualify – and they also qualify for the 2026 Signature events.

The Tour Championship is back at East Lake in Atlanta where Scottie Scheffler won in 2024. It is for the top 30 in FedEx Cup points, with a lot of major championship perks also coming with it.

The Ryder Cup

The chase for points begins immediately for the U.S. side, as well as the Europeans, who made a big shift in their qualification process by dropping their sometimes-confusing points system that had two separate lists and going to a single points list that includes PGA Tour Signature events as well as regular PGA Tour events.

European-born players will earn the most points at major championships, followed by PGA Tour signature events, playoff events and the Players Championship. That is a huge departure from the past, in which players only benefited via world ranking points from those PGA Tour events. The OWGR system is no longer in use for the European side.

What is interesting is a European player will earn just as many points for  a regular PGA Tour event as he will for a Rolex Series event on the DP World Tour. So in other words, the same points for the Valspar Championship as the Hero Dubai Classic. There are lower levels of points for other DP World Tour events as well as PGA Tour opposite events.

On the American side, players will earn one point per dollar earned in regular PGA Tour events and 1.5 points per dollar earned at the major championships. In an interesting development, the Players Championship does not get a bump in points.

Both sides will see the top six players in points qualify for the team automatically, with six at-large picks to be made by respective captains Keegan Bradley and Luke Donald.

The FedEx Fall

There are seven official events on the PGA Tour schedule following the Tour Championship, but the top 50 in points are locked in. This is an opportunity for players to move into the “next 10” after the top 50 in order to earn Signature event status at Pebble Beach and the Genesis in 2026. And it is also the place where status for 2026 is determined.

That takes on added importance in 2025 because that Tour has made a significant change to its 2026 format that will see the number of fully exempt playing cards reduced from 125 to 100. There are subsequent reductions on the Korn Ferry Tour from 30 to 20 spots and some Monday qualifying positions will go away.

That means a much larger group of exempt players in 2025 will be fighting for fewer spots in 2026. And they have one less event in which to do it. The long-running tournament in Las Vegas, which dates to 1983, is not on the 2025 schedule.

The fall events are the Procore Championship, the Sanderson Farms Championship, the Baycurrent Classic (formerly the Zozo Championship), the Black Desert Championship, the Worldwide Technology Championship, the Butterfield Bermuda Championship and the RSM Classic.