The 2025 season was chock-full of highlights, from Rory McIlroy’s completion of the career Grand Slam at the Masters and Scottie Scheffler’s two major wins to Jeeno Thitikul’s title defense at the CME Group Tour Championship, where she cemented her status as the LPGA’s new queen.
In all, the PGA Tour crowned winners in 46 official tournaments in 2025, while the LPGA had 32. Which victories emerged as the year’s most memorable? Check out our favorite season highlights below.
It feels impossible to top the magnitude and emotional relevance of McIlroy’s Masters win, where there were so many factors in play: the fact that McIlroy hadn’t won a major in 11 years; that he had endured a soul-crushing defeat at Augusta in 2011; that he had experienced a more recent soul-crushing defeat at 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst, when two short missed putts down the stretch derailed his chances of winning. The list goes on!
Then, with victory looming on Sunday at the 2025 Masters, late missteps put his triumph in doubt yet again, with a double-bogey on 13 and a bogey on 18 dropping him into a sudden-death playoff with Justin Rose.
The stakes simply could not be higher. McIlroy’s birdie to win — and the cathartic outpouring of emotion he displayed on the green in the aftermath — made for some of the most dramatic and emotionally-charged viewing of the year.
Heading into the 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont, J.J. Spaun had only one win on his resume. But during a rainy major week, he overcame a five-bogeys-in-the-first-six-holes start to the final round, using a mid-round weather delay to his advantage.
Spaun reset to go three under par on the back nine, punctuated by clutch birdies on 17 and a show-stopping 64-foot bomb for birdie that dropped on the 18th, which ultimately sealed his victory.
The putt was so epic, even Spaun’s closest competitors, Robert MacIntyre and Tyrrell Hatton, couldn’t help but laud the winner.
Keegan Bradley’s Ryder Cup captaincy just so happened to coincide with some of the best golf of his life.
The now 39-year-old’s game started ramping up in late 2022, when he won the ZOZO, ending a four-year win drought. He then won the 2023 Travelers Championship and 2024 BMW Championship, making a serious case for a scenario in which he could pick himself for his own Ryder Cup team.
Bradley posted four top-eight finishes over the course of the first five months in 2025. The came June’s Travelers Championship, when Bradley caught fire with his putting during the final round, draining three long bombs of 16, 64, and 37 feet, which set up a clutch six-footer on the final hole that Bradley also drained to win the tournament by one stroke over Tommy Fleetwood (who was still seeking his maiden PGA Tour victory at the time) and Russell Henley.
The win made Bradley’s worthiness as a Ryder Cup captain’s pick seem like a lock, but he ultimately declined to pick himself.
Until this year, Cameron Young was frequently named as one of the Tour’s best players without a win.
The 28-year-old had come close an excruciating seven times prior to August’s Wyndham Championship.
Then, it was finally Young’s time. He glided to a wire-to-wire victory by an impressive six shots over Mac Meissner.
The win was also an opportune time to shine, putting his name front-and-center for U.S. Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley. Young got the nod as a captain’s pick and was a standout for the U.S. team at Bethpage, going 3-1-0.
Like Cameron Young, Tommy Fleetwood suffered a number of near-misses in his quest to win his first PGA Tour tournament (though Fleetwood did have an impressive list of victories on his DP World Tour resume).
With six PGA Tour runner-ups to his name, including the heartbreaking loss to Bradley at the Travelers Championship mentioned above, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before Fleetwood would experience his breakthrough. And sure enough, his time quickly came, as his three-shot victory at the Tour Championship over Patrick Cantlay and Russell Henley sealed the deal on his maiden PGA Tour title — and earned him a sweet $10 million winner’s check too.
A former World No. 1 on the amateur circuit, Woad is accustomed to claiming big wins. She has an Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship on her resume, as well as a win at the Ladies European Tour’s Irish Open, which she achieved while still an amateur.
But when Woad cruised to a three-shot victory at the Women’s Scottish Open, it elevated her into even more rarefied air. The win was an incredible achievement on its own, but exponentially more so when you consider it was the 21-year-old’s pro debut, matching Rose Zhang’s achievement in 2023.
While Jeeno Thitikul’s CME Group Tour win would be a worthy entry on this list, her bounce-back from a crushing loss to Charley Hull after four-putting the 18th green feels even more significant.
In a season that saw record parity on the LPGA Tour, with 29 different winners, Thitikul was looking to become the first two-time winner of the season coming down the stretch at September’s Kroger Queen City Classic. Victory appeared to be within her grasp, but a shocking four-putt on the 18th hole meant the title went to Hull instead.
Thitikul said later that she cried so much over the loss that she needed to apply an ice pack to her face. Then she took a week off to regroup in Banff, Canada, without her clubs.
Mentally restored, Thitikul won her next start, the LPGA Shanghai. Thitikul eagled the 17th hole in the final round to force a playoff, and she ultimately prevailed on the fifth playoff hole against Japan’s Minami Katsu. The win made Thitikul the first player to reach two wins all season — a feat matched by Miyu Yamashita three weeks later. But Thitikul’s season-finale CME Group Tour Championship victory in November three weeks after that made her the only three-time winner of the year.
When Viktor Hovland won back-to-back titles at the BMW Championship and Tour Championship in 2023, he seemed unstoppable. But golf is a fickle game, and Hovland was winless on the PGA Tour in 2024.
He didn’t get off to a great start in 2025 either, missing three cuts in a row at the Genesis, Arnold Palmer Invitational and Players Championship before arriving at the Valspar.
Hovland started the final round trailing Justin Thomas, but birdied three of his final five holes to edge Thomas by one shot.
Despite the surprise victory, Hovland remained memorably unimpressed with the state of his game.
“It’s unbelievable to see that I could win,” Hovland said. “Because I honestly did not believe that I could do it this week.
“I am still hitting a lot of disgusting shots.”
At 45 years old, Justin Rose is an elder statesman on the PGA Tour, but he continually proves he can hang with the young guns — like in August, when the World No. 10 claimed a wire-to-wire victory at the FedEx St. Jude.
Tied in regulation with U.S. Open champion J.J. Spaun, Rose beat Spaun in a playoff with a birdie on the third hole to claim his 12th career PGA Tour victory, and first since the 2023 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
With 15 PGA Tour wins over the last decade, JT has been one of the most consistently excellent players on Tour. But after his second major championship win at the 2022 PGA, Thomas embarked on a nearly three-year win drought — the longest of his career.
Prior to the RBC Heritage, Thomas had posted four top-nine finishes, including two runner-ups. But victory had remained elusive. Then, things turned around at Harbour Town. Thomas tied with Andrew Novak in regulation, and drained a 20-foot birdie putt to win the tournament on the first playoff hole, giving him his 16th career win — and a serious boost in confidence for the remainder of the season.
Which of Scottie Scheffler’s two major victories was the most memorable in 2025? He won them both by impressive margins — five shots at the PGA and four at the Open Championship. But the PGA resonates — especially given the circumstances of last year’s PGA Championship, where Scheffler was shockingly arrested.
The win at the 2025 PGA was yet another impressive example of Scheffler’s dominance and resilience. And now, after his triumph at the Open Championship, he’s one U.S. Open win away from becoming the seventh player ever to achieve the career Grand Slam. And something tells us he won’t be stopping there.
We’ll end this fond season-long remembrance with a look back at the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, which was so full of compelling storylines that it’s hard to know where to start.
From captain Keegan Bradley’s yearning for redemption and the crowd’s unruly behavior to the Europeans’ early dominance and the nail-biting U.S. comeback in Sunday singles, the 2025 Ryder Cup, which Team Europe won by a margin of 15-13 — is one we won’t soon forget.
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