The 2025 PGA Championship: 18 Parting Thoughts

The world No. 1 has prevailed at Quail Hollow. Scottie Scheffler overcame a spotty front nine on Sunday to cruise to victory at the PGA Championship, picking up his third career major. He’s now won his last two events by a combined 13 shots. There is so, so much to discuss. (And we'll do a lot of it tomorrow on Dan on Golf.) But first, here are 18 Parting Thoughts on the 2025 PGA Championship.

Scottie Gets Ahead Of His Peers On Two Majors, And It Feels Wholly Deserved

The all-time greats in this sport are able to adapt mid-round. Scottie Scheffler couldn’t hit a fairway for the first nine holes on Sunday. He was battling a case of The Lefts, and The Lefts have ravaged countless golfers’ hopes and dreams. While he faltered, John Rahm surged, turning what seemed like a march to victory into a battle.

Then Scottie started flushing. He pumped a tee shot down the center on the par-5 10th. Birdie. Two more perfect swings on 11. Easy par. Another bomb with driver on 12 and another stress-free par. A 6-iron pin high on the bouncy par-3 13th. Par. A fairway wood just right of his target on the drivable but dangerous par-4 14th, then a lovely bunker shot. Birdie for a two-shot lead. A bombed drive on 15 all but sealed the deal.

The win sees Scheffler get his nose ahead of the group of his peers with two major championships. That group includes two of the guys he beat Sunday in Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm. Also with two: Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele and Justin Thomas. Just like it felt right for Rory to win the Masters, there was a sense of cosmic justice in Scheffler's victory. He’s been the best player on the planet for three full years, and his sustained excellence deserved a non-Masters major championship. He’s now halfway to the career Grand Slam.

One Conversation We Can Stop Having

I’m not buying the “LIV Golf made these guys uncompetitive” argument. It’s way too broad a stroke. Could going to LIV Golf change an individual’s priorities and calculus? Of course. But so can having a baby or winning a major championship. Everyone responds to changes in circumstances differently. Could it be that Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson’s downturn in form is related to all that money? Absolutely. But it’s not fair to extrapolate that and apply it to every player on LIV. Jon Rahm’s clearly still one of the best players in the world. Bryson’s gotten better since he went to LIV. Different strokes for different folks.

Bryson Will Be Even Scarier When He Figures Out His Wedges

It sure feels like Bryson could take a page out of Dustin Johnson’s book and hyper focus on wedge distance control. It’s a glaring weakness that reared its head Sunday at Augusta and yet again at Quail Hollow. With how well he drives the ball he has heaps of wedges into greens and he simply couldn’t get it pin high. The towards isn’t the issue, it’s the carry number. It’s baffling that a guy who hits that many balls, and who’s so all-in on the clock system to control distance, isn’t controlling distance very well.

“I am as frustrated as Bryson watching him hit one trash short iron/wedge after another,” is how Alan Shipnuck described it from on-site.

That wedge combine changed Dustin Johnson’s career. Bryson’s starting from a better position than DJ was. He’ll be scary if he can improve the wedges.

And his play in the wind. The swirling breeze really frustrated him this week.

“On 17, hit a great 9-iron exactly the way I wanted to,” Bryson said of his 9-iron into the water on Saturday, which torpedoed his chances to win the tournament. “The wind just pumped it. Nothing I can do. Wind flipped from being neutral off the right like it was on 4, I believe, and it just was almost straight in and we misjudged that, considering on 16 we thought it was playing almost a little downwind.

“Hit a great shot on 17 and just made a dumb double, and on 18 hit a great 3-wood. Just needed to aim it more left. It went in the bunker and consequently—I actually hit a great shot out of the bunker. Right on my target line and the wind just turned into me again. It was just a tale of the wind going into me instead of downwind. It cost me three shots and that's what happens here at Quail Hollow.”

It happens anywhere there’s wind. Bryson hits it harder and higher and spinnier than anyone, so his ball’s going to be more impacted by the wind. Rory McIlroy’s talked at length this year about how adding off-speed shots to his repertory has made him a more complete player. Bryson would be an absolute weapon if he develops that shot. It’s no coincidence he’s had almost no success at Open Championships, where wind’s a constant factor.

Let's Make Room For a Few More Names

At the risk of sounding cranky, I think we should cut down the amount of club pros who qualify for the PGA Championship to 10. It used to be 25, it’s now 20, and now I think it should be 10. The delta between touring professionals and club professionals has never been bigger. I fully understand that this is the PGA of America’s championship, and it’s a genuinely nice thing to highlight the amazing contributions they make to the game on a daily basis. I don’t see how chopping it down to 10 would impact that too significantly. It’d just be the CoreBridge Team of 10 instead of 20. Same mission accomplished, but in turn, there would be more world-class players in one of the four biggest tournaments in the world.

Would You Rather They Play Through?

Quite a few folks were taking the piss, to use an all-time Britishism, out of the T-Mobile advertisement/activation on the 14th tee. It looked a bit goofy, sure, but isn’t that exactly what we’ve been asking for? Advertisements are vital to the business of professional sports, and golf is no different. They’re not going away. We’ve been asking for companies to innovate how they broadcast, and with golf being played on a 100+ acre venue there are plenty of chances to get some branding in there without cutting away from the action. Give me the zaniness over a commercial of a playing-through every time. I liked it.

Move It Along, Folks

The lights are on, we’re out of booze, and the Block Party’s over. The party began two years ago in earnest fashion; his everyman affect and charmed play put a serious charge throughout Oak Hill. A Sunday hole-in-one and a 1-in-100 up and down on the 72nd hole locked up a T15 and an automatic invite into the 2024 PGA at Valhalla. Shortly thereafter, he claimed the only difference between his game and Rory McIlroy’s is distance. That didn’t go over well in the locker room.

He missed the cut last year but played his way back into this year’s PGA Championship through traditional channels. The broadcast showed quite a few of his shots at Quail Hollow but he missed the cut by 14 this year, shooting +15 for two days. He then gave this head-scratching quote to Golf.com. I’d love to hear the audio to suss out his tone, but se la vie.

"That's kind of the funny part is I wish there was a huge crowd on every hole because that's when I hit my shots…. “When there's no one around is when I hit my worst shots. That's something that I need more in my life is a bigger crowd. I just need to play a little better so it could happen. I could only imagine what would have happened if I would have been playing really good this week."

That, too, won’t go over well in the locker room. Not that it really matters—he’s not a tour player, and he’s done more than enough to be a name in golf for the rest of his days. But yeah, didn’t go over well. Here’s how Ben “The Weapon” An took it:

All parties come to an end at some point. This one died with that 82 on Friday.

About the Course...

Quail Hollow is a perfectly good PGA TOUR venue. One of the better ones, even. It’s a massive property and they’ve built some of those double-wide cart paths that Augusta has, which makes the flow of fans so much easier. The Charlotte fans always turn out. It’s a great place to watch a golf tournament.

But the course itself sure felt a bit underwhelming this week. It’s not just that the PGA TOUR visits this spot once a year—it’s that they do it in the first week of May, which means the playing conditions this week were exactly the same as they were in the 2024 Wells Fargo. In general I am against yearly tour venues hosting major championships. Part of the fun early-week during majors is seeing the best players on the planet task learn a track crash-course style. The lone exception to this rule is Pebble Beach. One, because it’s Pebble Beach. Two, the yearly tour event’s played in February when it’s wet and chilly, and U.S. Opens at Pebble are in June when the rough is thick and the greens are crispy. The USGA also sets up Pebble far different than the PGA TOUR does. The PGA of America set up this course quite similarly to how the PGA TOUR did in years past.

“I thought it was going to feel different just because it was a major championship,” said Rory McIlroy on Wednesday, and I got out on the golf course yesterday, and it felt no different than last year at the Wells Fargo. The rough is maybe a little juicier. But fairways are still the same cut lines and same visuals. It doesn't feel that much different.”

What a bummer. That’s two consecutive years that the PGA Championship has been held on uninspiring venues. Of all the major championship venues I’ve been lucky enough to see, in terms of which ones I’d most want to play, Valhalla is second-to-last and Quail Hollow is last. Aronimink should break that streak next year, and there are more bangers on the way: Olympic Club, Baltusrol, Congressional and Kiawah.

That Said…Man, Do I Love a Sharp-Edge Bunker

And Quail Hollow had a bunch of them this week. The best examples of these are in the Melbourne sandbelt, where the green runs directly into a bunker with no strip of rough or fringe in between. It leads to the ball dramatically trickling toward a bunker, then that inflection point when you know there’s no chance it stops. When turf conditions permit, I’d prefer every greenside bunker be cut this way.

A Few Extra Flowers for Quail Hollow

One more positive note on the golf course. The last five holes crescendo beautifully. The short par-4 14th kicked off the finishing stretch, and having a drivable par 4 on the back 9 of a major championship is delightful. Then you’ve got the par-5 15th, so there’s an opportunity to play those holes in 2-under or better before you turn around and play the three toughest holes on the course. It’s very rare to have the 16th hole be the third-most difficult on the course, the 17th be the second-most, and the 18th be the hardest. There are difficult finishing stretches on lots of courses but it’s often the 4th-most difficult, then the 5th, then the 2nd. Or the 3rd, then the 6th, then the fourth. To have those two birdie-able holes before the finishing gauntlet—that’s part of what makes good golf course architecture. They’re not a random assortment of 18 holes. They have a distinct order.

A Tip of the Cap to Joaquin Niemann

He overcame a +3 first round to play the next 54 holes in -7 to pick up his best-ever finish in a major championship (T-8) and his first major Top 10. That we’re writing about this is a testament to how good he’s been on LIV. It’s the burden of success: expectation. He expects it of himself, too. If we’re going to write about when he disappoints in majors, it’s only fair to acknowledge when he experiences a semi breakthrough.

Predictions Remain a Fool's Errand

Rory McIlroy’s round on Thursday was the 30 millionth reminder of just how foolish an endeavor it is to try to predict what’s going to happen in this sport. There isn’t a better course fit this side of Tiger Woods-Firestone than Rory McIlroy at Quail Hollow. Jordan Spieth dubbed it “Rory McIlroy Country Club last week,” and for good reason. He’d won here 4 times. There are a bunch of holes where carrying it 310+ gives an exponential advantage. He came in on great form—a top 10 in his start immediately prior with what he said was essentially his C-game—and without the all-consuming burden of his decade-plus major drought.

He proceeded to shoot a lifeless three-over 74 on Thursday. He drove the ball like shit on Thursday and only marginally better Friday, and news trickled out that the gamer driver he used at the Masters was deemed non-conforming this week by the governing bodies. Beyond golf being played outside, on a 150-acre surface, with the club only being in contact with the ball for fractions of a second each stroke, there’s yet another variable: sometimes a guy can’t use his preferred club because the metal got too thin. A truly impossible sport to predict.

Speaking of the driver situation…it’s not his fault, obviously. Nothing untoward. Governing bodies test drivers every week and plenty fail, and as the PGA of America’s official statement made clear on Saturday, there is no question as to the player’s motivations. This is not a corked-bat situation, no matter what Rory haters online say.

Don't Miss This Rory Quote

Rory didn’t speak with media after play began this week, which is odd. Whether a player talks to media has been a constant topic of discussion over the last few months and there’s nothing really new to add: obviously we’d prefer if a player did it, but so long as it’s not required, guys will continue to skip.

That said, he delivered an all-time quote on Wednesday: “I've done everything I've wanted to do in the game. I dreamed as a child of becoming the best player in the world and winning all the majors. I've done that. Everything beyond this, for however long I decide to play the game competitively, is a bonus.”

Sheesh…

"Mudball!"

Mudballs were the talk of the town of Thursday. Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele won me over with their reasoning as to why the PGA of America should’ve played the ball up (preferred lies). I was definitely in the minority among media—the consensus was: these guys are soft, it’s part of the game—and I wonder if I’m going to be in the minority again with this take.

A situation like Shane Lowry’s on Friday should result in free relief. Lowry piped a drive down the center of the fairway on the par-4 8th. His ball pitched in the fairway then crawled into a pitch mark—but because it was someone else’s pitch mark, he wasn’t entitled to relief. He had absolutely no chance from there, left his second well short and then took a chunk out of the earth.

Finishing in anyone’s pitch mark should result in a free drop. It’s different to being in a divot because you can still advance the ball from a divot. That’s a skill, to put it back in the stance and trap it. There’s not a golfer in the world who couldn’t put Lowry’s ball on the green. That’s why you get relief from your own pitch mark: it’s not a navigable problem.

The Legend of Si Woo Kim Continues to Grow

And with a Top 10 finish in this major to add to it.

I’ve gotten to know Si Woo over the last few years as he’s gotten more comfortable with his English. I agree with Scottie that he’s one of the funniest characters on TOUR. The guy drinks tons of Red Bulls and then, when he gets too jittery, he pops an Advil PM to return to homeostasis. He wears his emotions on his sleeve on the golf course. He never minces words. I asked him what it was like to play alongside Scottie Scheffler during the first two rounds of the CJ Cup, which Scottie wound up winning by 8.

“After like 7 (holes) I feel so poor, I feel like rubbish. I feel like I”m not on the PGA tour. Like God versus the way bottom. All the irons right at the pin, right at the pin, right at the pin. I feel like the pin was pulling his ball, fishing.”

He’s full of personality. Apparently a little nicotine has made it into the mix as well. He was caught taking a couple drags of a cigarette on Thursday. When I asked him what that’s about, since I hadn’t seen it, he said “getting old and stressed.” He then made the longest ace in major championship history at over 250 yards and celebrated it like he was in a Good Good video. The crowds loved him this week, constantly doing the wooooo that sounds like a Boo. And he was serenaded a few times by the Si Woo, shakin that ass, shakin that ass, shakin that ass. He’s the best.

A 9 Wood, Huh?

I’m old enough to remember when all the cool kids were getting rid of hybrids and putting driving irons in the bag. Furniture was the enemy, the domain of old country club players. It’s flipped now. We have entered the era of the high-lofted fairway wood. It’s no longer noteworthy to have a 7-wood in the bag. The new frontier is 9-woods. Collin Morikawa put one in play this week. He was far from the only one.

“It’s actually amazing,” Morikawa told TaylorMade. “If I have 225 out and I need stopping power, it probably goes higher than any club in my bag. Why wouldn’t you use it?”

On weeks with long rough these clubs are a weapon—you can chop a ball out of the cabbage easier than with a long-iron, which has a more pronounced leading edge. Guys used to hate hitting them off tees because they spun so much but technology has improved. I actually just went the other way, getting rid of a hybrid in favor of a long iron. But I don’t play courses with five-inch rough and rock-hard greens.

Good On You, Alex Noren

An amazing showing from Alex Noren to play his way into the final pairing on Sunday of a major championship in just his second start since October. In an era when so many guys are constantly tweaking their golf swings and working on different stuff, Noren stays doing that exaggerated over-the-top rehearsal. I kept wondering this week how many times he’s done that in his career. 20,000? 50,000? Feels like a good question for a consulting interview. Golf’s version of “how many parking meters are there in New York City?”

Now, More on Tweaking

We had Brandel Chamblee on Dan On Golf a few months back and I kept going back this week to what he said.

“The ability to look at video and go into data deep-dives and change what is already working is certainly an epidemic of this generation because they have so much information. But it is very, very dangerous. The most dangerous place at a golf course is not Amen Corner, it’s not the Snake Pit, it’s not the Bear Pit. It’s the driving range. That’s the most dangerous place at any tour event. More games are killed there than anywhere else.”

So many world-class players are tempted by perfection. They want to neutralize their path or be able to shape it both ways, and that desire to constantly improve—which, of course, is part of the motor that got them to where they are—convinces them to stray from an already-solid formula. Take Max Homa for example. He has spent more time hitting balls this year than anyone else…only to eventually come full circle and decide he wants to back to how it was before.

“It felt like 2 ½-3 weeks ago, (swing coach) John Scott (Rattan) came out for a few days, and we really dove into what -- like I got more honest with him about what I thought we should do and he— it's going to hopefully be one of those things I remember. I said, I think I should swing it like this. And he said, okay, show me. And I showed him. And he said, okay, let's mold off of that, let's make that the model.

“It felt more like my old golf swing back in '22, '23-ish. Yeah, '22-' 23, and I kind of knew the misses better, my hands just worked through the shot better. So, yeah, about 2 1/2 weeks ago I was like, okay, I see the misses. It's been hard. I feel like I was playing with a foreign swing at times.”

It’s frustrating to hear because swing changes are often a flat circle. You end up where you started. You spend a year or two trying to discover the Fountain of Youth only to pull up cellphone videos from two years ago and going back to that. Davis Riley said something similar on Saturday.

“It was a pretty big struggle to start the year, and yeah, there was a couple tweaks I made in my swing trying to get back to some of my old DNA and seeing draws, really,” he said after working his way into contention. So I'm starting to get more and more comfortable as the year has gone on. Starting to see the ball right and turn left.

“I feel like I play my best golf, especially with my irons, if I'm hitting a little draw and just a small cut off the tee. I'm starting to see those shot shapes and trust it a lot more on the course. At the beginning of the year, I was able to do it at home but never really got comfortable out on the course because I was trying to soften the draw a little bit and I was trying to tighten some start lines. But I've kind of figured out, I just play my best golf when I embrace a little bit of the draw. I'm honestly more and more comfortable on the golf course and trusting those shot shapes.”

Look, Tiger Woods played the best golf anyone’s every played and decided he needed to change his swing. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that a generation of golfers who idolized him have adopted that always-improving mentality. But would they be better off sticking with what got them to the top? Perhaps. But that’s just not how they’re wired. There’s no right answer.

Keegan Might Have a Tough Decision to Make

How funny would it be for the PGA of America to make such a bold decision to pick Keegan Bradley to be the Ryder Cup captain, only for him to play so well that he plays on the team and hands the duties over to Jim Furyk, the exact type of captain the PGA of America wanted to depart from? It’s a serious possibility now.

Bradley entered this week way down in the Ryder Cup points but ranked No. 19 in the world rankings. He fired an opening-round 67 then hung around all week for his first major top-10 since the 2022 U.S. Open and just the fourth of his career. I’ve said all year that I think he should announce he’s going to focus solely on being the captain. I asked him Thursday whether he wants to play in the Ryder Cup.

“I don't know. I want to help the team the best I can. If that means playing, then I'll do that. But you know, I think it's pretty difficult to do both. But I have incredible vice captains, including Jim Furyk, who has done this before. Snedeker and Webb and Kisner have all been assistants.

“We have a great team. But if it comes down to do I think that's what will help us win, that's what I'll do. But yeah, that's the only thought in my head.”

He said he’s going to re-assess after the U.S. Open. Another major top 10 and he, and the PGA of America, might have a real situation on their hands.