This is Scheffler’s 4th (consecutive) DG PoY award, the 2nd-most behind Tiger (11). Among active players, Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy have 2 PoYs, nobody else has more than 1. With an adjusted strokes-gained average of +3.3, Scheffler backed up his incredible 2024 (+3.2) and broke the +3 mark for the second consecutive season—a barrier that has now been eclipsed 10 times since 1983 (Tiger 7x, Scottie 2x, Norman 1x). On a similar note, Scheffler broke the 150-DG-Points barrier again after first doing it last year, making him the only non-Tiger player to do it twice. Spieth (2015) and Vijay (2004) are the only other players with 150-point seasons.

Scheffler's accomplishments in 2025 continued the torrid pace he has set since 2022 and solidified him as a serious contender to become the best player since Tiger—a title that has been loosely held by Rory McIlroy for the past decade. Their battle is best visualized through their head-to-head cumulative DG Points plot: despite a relatively slow start to his career, Scottie has almost caught up to Rory's DG Points total at the age of 29. Whether he ultimately surpasses Rory by the end of his career will likely come down to longevity.

This was the second-best season of Hojgaard’s career by DG Points (25.0 in 2023) and his first time as the best young player. Hojgaard’s point total was historically low for the best under-25 player in a season. Since 1983, there has been only one year with a lower mark (Dudley Hart in 1992), with the average top young player earning 61.6 points.

Here are the 15 best seasons of all-time from young players: Tiger Woods (from ages 21-24), Rory McIlroy (20-23), and Jordan Spieth (19-22) have all won 4 best young player awards; Jose Maria Olazabal (22-24) and Sergio Garcia (21,22,24) have each won 3, while Collin Morikawa (23,24) and Fred Couples (23,24) both have two.

This is the 4th straight season where the best young player has earned fewer points than the historical average (Hovland, Tom Kim, Aberg, and now Hojgaard). This is reflective of a broader slowdown in the success of young players on the PGA Tour. From 1983-2010, players under the age of 25 earned about 4% of DG Points per year on the PGA Tour; this increased to 11% from 2011-2021 (peaking at 16% in 2017), but since 2022 has fallen to 6.6% (their fraction in 2025 was 5.6%).

After a few years hovering around the -1 to -1.5 SG range, Marco Penge broke out in 2025 and averaged +0.83 adjusted SG per round—42nd-best in the world and almost 2 strokes better than his 2024 average. He ended 2024 ranked ~450th in the DG Rankings and reached as high as 42nd in late 2025.

Prior to this season Penge was long but inaccurate off the tee, an average putter, and struggled mightily with his approach and around-the-green game. In 2025 he transformed his ball-striking: he maintained his length while improving his driving accuracy to just below average, and went from losing a shot per round on approach to gaining nearly half a shot. Penge's improvements off-the-tee and on approach were the largest of any player in those categories in 2025. Heading into 2026, the best thing Penge has going for him is that he's now elite off the tee: he ranks 4th in our skill ratings behind only Bryson, Scottie, and Rahm, and just ahead of Rory. This is a very valuable skill to have as he embarks on his rookie PGA Tour campaign.

Here is Penge's current skill profile (olive) overlayed with his 2024 profile (orange), which highlights his transition from a one-dimensional player to a more well-rounded PGA Tour threat:

Prior to 2025, J.J. Spaun fit the mold of a PGA Tour journeyman to a tee: 34 years old with 8 seasons on the PGA Tour under his belt, a single PGA Tour win to his name, and 6 career major championship starts. There were signs that bigger things could be on the horizon—Spaun averaged +0.7 SG in 2023 and broke into the top 50 of our rankings—but as a player with less firepower than most, winning at the game’s biggest events seemed out of reach.

After 2025, our perception of J.J. Spaun has completely changed. His season will be remembered for the breakthrough win at the U.S. Open, but he also had 3 runner-up finishes (including a playoff loss to Rory McIlroy at the Players). Even if we exclude Spaun’s major victory, he would still have finished 11th (40.6 points) on the 2025 DG Points list. Relative to his previous best season in 2023, the 2025 version of Spaun is a better player pretty much across the board:

Schauffele's 3-year DG Points average (with 50% weight to 2024, 30% to 2023, and 20% to 2022) heading into 2025 was 83.8. He only accumulated 24.5 points, almost 60 fewer than projected.

Following up his breakthrough 2024 season was always going to be challenging for Schauffele, but 2025 ended up being the worst season of his PGA Tour career by DG Points. This is partly due to the fact that an early-season rib injury limited him to 16 starts, but even using average SG this was his worst campaign since 2018.

Throughout his career, Schauffele has been one of the most well-rounded players in the game. In 2024, he ranked 5th in putting, 14th around-the-green, 2nd on approach, and 6th off-the-tee on the PGA Tour. His year-over-year consistency even led us to name our favourite field strength metric after him (the X-score). But in 2025, Schauffele’s performance regressed in all four SG categories, with his putting experiencing the largest drop-off: The good news heading into next year is that Schauffele’s ball-striking was still solid in 2025; the only difference with prior seasons was a decline in driving accuracy. He also finished the year on a high note, earning his lone victory of the season at the Baycurrent Classic. If Schauffele can return to the reliably elite putter that has defined much of his career, there’s little reason to doubt he’ll be back among the game’s top players in 2026.

Scottie Scheffler gained 61.4 strokes on the field at the 2025 majors, where he recorded 2 wins (by 5 at the PGA and 4 at The Open), a 4th at the Masters, and a T7 at the U.S. Open. This is the best major season of Scheffler’s career, and puts him 7th on the list of best major championship seasons since 1983 (5th by DG Points): Scheffler's career adjusted strokes-gained average at majors is now +2.88 per round, which is higher than Tiger's +2.85 (between the age of 20 and 40). He is starting to distance himself from the diagonal line on our Major Performers plot:

Given his position heading into final rounds in 2025, our model expected Niemann to win 1.95 times. Post-final round—knowing how Niemann played but not accounting for the rest of the field's performance—that number was all the way up to 3.2. This difference (3.2 vs 1.95) is one way to measure a player's final-round performance.

Niemann had a 6% chance or better of winning to begin final rounds on 6 occasions in 2025. All of these came at LIV events, and he went on to win 5 of them: The post-final-round expected wins come from the “given how he played” column.

Niemann had 4 great final rounds at LIV Virginia, Adelaide, Mexico City, and Singapore. He still got a bit lucky too (5 wins versus the 3.2 expected based on his final-round performance). Interestingly, Niemann slightly underperformed his final-round SG expectation at LIV United Kingdom, but his expected wins increased from pre to post-round because he was leading by 6 going into the final round.

The 2025 season was the first of Rahm's career without a win, as well as his lowest DG Point total since turning pro in mid-2016: Rahm became a +2 SG player very quickly after starting his PGA Tour career, averaging more than 2 SG per round from 2019-2024. Even though his 2025 SG (+1.91) isn’t much of a deviation from this, it's still the 2nd-worst season of his career. From a points perspective, Rahm’s falloff has been precipitous since joining LIV. SG is more predictive than DG Points, so we should probably expect some bigger results from Rahm in 2026.

Due to LIV’s small and relatively weak fields, there are only so many points an elite player can accumulate playing there full-time—Niemann’s 5 LIV wins made him 12th on the 2025 DG Points list—but even taking that into consideration, Rahm’s 2025 was special for its consistency and lack of meaningful accomplishments. Rahm gained at least 1 stroke per round in all his starts except one (an MC at the Dubai Desert Classic), but his best finish by DG Points was only a T7 at the U.S. Open. In LIV events, he had no wins, 4 runner-ups, and a worst finish of T11.

This is the second straight season that Rahm has taken down this award.

After taking a big step forward in terms of strokes gained last year (from -0.32 in 2023 to +0.53 in 2024), Novak maintained that level of play in 2025 and added several high-end results, putting together a career year in terms of DG Points: A 3rd-place finish at the Farmers in January kickstarted Novak's season, but he really made hay in April, notching three of his four best results of the season that month: a solo 2nd at the RBC Heritage, a win at the Zurich Classic (with Ben Griffin), and a T3 at the Valero Texas Open.

Novak finished the 2025 season with 32.9 DG Points, more than 20 points higher than 2024 despite a nearly identical SG average.

Through 3 holes of the final round at the 2025 Soudal Open, Reitan was T26 and 9 strokes back of leader Ewen Ferguson. At the time our model gave him a 0.004% (or 1 in 25,000) chance of winning. Kristoffer proceeded to play his last 15 holes in 9-under to squeak into a playoff where he prevailed over Ferguson and Daris van Driel. The biggest probability swing of the day (outside of winning the playoff) came when Ferguson bogied the final hole to fall back into a tie with Reitan and van Driel at -13, increasing Reitan's win probability from 5% to 33%.

In round 4 of the 2025 Valspar Championship, Thomas found himself 2 strokes ahead of Viktor Hovland with 3 holes to play. Our model gave him a 90% chance of winning at the time. From there, Thomas bogied 16 and 18 to finish at -10, while Hovland birdied 16 and 17 before dropping a shot on 18 to win by 1 stroke at -11.