🧓 The Veteran Who Will Win A Major

📢 Fore, Please:

Hey guys — I wanted to try something new for this week. I’ve been working hard on coming out with a “RunGood 50” where I will rank the Top 50 golfers in the world for 2025. Then at the end of next year, I’ll grade them all and see how I did. I figure it would be an annual tradition where I can cover a lot of golfers while providing plenty of cold-takes-exposed ammo.

This email won’t be a 50 to 1 list but rather a collection of golfers who I think are the best, most compelling, interesting, frightening for 2025 and I’ve ranked them into tiers.

I won’t include everyone or even write-ups on everyone but it should provide a great outline.

I hope you enjoy
Rick

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😱 Get Used To These Names

Frankie Capan III
The first time I laid eyes on Capan was the 2023 U.S. Open at LACC. He has a great amateur record and played his college golf at Alabama. When I saw him, he certainly looked the part and I, for some reason, said he would win the PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year in his first year of eligibility. Well, thanks to his win in September on the Korn Ferry Tour, he’s now got the chance to prove me right. Also, his name is pronounced “Sap-in”.

Niklas Norgaard
He’s technically been a pro for eight years but he’s a “late-bloomer” or has really emerged as a top talent in the last twelve months. He smashed the ball (3rd in DP World Tour distance) and hits tons of greens (15th). He also gained strokes putting in nine of his last ten (at time of this writing). He’s a machine.

Tom McKibbin
Anytime someone has the nickname “Little Rory” we should probably take notice. The 21-year old grew up at Holywood Golf Club in Northern Ireland, just like McIlroy. He won the European Open in 2023 and earned his PGA TOUR card from the DP World Tour. He has plenty of room to grow and he’s already on the big circuit.

🥵 Are They For Real?

These guys were awesome late in the year, but can they continue that when fields get deeper in 2025?

Max Greyserman
He gained 1.75 strokes per round from the U.S. Open to the end of the year (44 rounds). There were only ten players in the world, on any tour, that were better than Greyserman. That list is Schauffele, Hatton, Alker, Padraig, Ernie, Catlin, McIlroy, Rasmus Hojgaard, Matt McCarty. Some of those are old guys beating up on other old guys!

Those ten names accounted for 14 wins over that 5+ month period. Max had zero. So he’s either playing way over his head or many wins are coming.

Nico Echavarria
He played 26 rounds and gained 1.41 strokes/rd in the fall. You know who else played that well in that many rounds? No one. He had a win (his second on TOUR), a runner-up and a T6. I love the kid and am hoping he can find more consistency in 2025.

Ben Griffin
117. That’s the number of rounds played by Ben in 2024 — the most of anyone on the PGA TOUR. With that great effort came decent returns. He had (9) different Top 15 finishes and started to hit the ball much better in the second half of the year. He’s normally been a short-game specialist but if he can maintain that new dimension into 2025, he could have a very solid year.

Kevin Yu, Justin Lower, Seamus Power

Nick Dunlap
He’s going to be a Top 10 player in the world at some point in 2025. It might be because of his play (he’s very good) but it’s also because of the way the OWGR system works. After the Hero World Challenge, he will have had 26 counting events but the OWGR system has a minimum divisor of 40. So he’s being “penalized” for having too few events. We saw the same thing with Ludvig.

🤔 Pretty Good, But Might Be The Same Guy

Akshay Bhatia
Definitely more on the “pretty good” side of this spectrum. He does have a chipping problem (119th on TOUR) but that gets corrected by being a Top 60 player in each of the other three strokes gained categories. The best trait he has is his adaptability. Usually going to a broomstick putter is a last resort for a golfer trying to hold onto their glory days. Bhatia is only 22 and whipped out the broomstick to go from 183rd on TOUR in putting to 33rd. That willingness to commit to a process this early in his career is a great sign.

Stephan Jaeger, Thomas Detry, Adam Hadwin

J.T. Poston, Brian Harman, Corey Conners, Cameron Davis

Aaron Rai
He was born in the middle of the clubface. It’s his safe place. He never strays far from its warmth. His +0.88 strokes/rd ball-striking was 11th on TOUR in 2024, ranking him right between Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland (is that good?). His victory at the Wyndham Championship was overshadowed by an old man worried about being out after dark. But that win gets him a lot of freedom and entry into big events for 2025.

🏆 Best Chance To Win Their First Major

Ludvig Aberg
Hehe — you are all screwed. He’s played fewer events in his career (33) than Ben Griffin (35), SH Kim (34) and Eric Cole (34) played this past season. Since turning pro, he’s the fourth best player in the world behind Scheffler, Schauffele and McIlroy. He wins, he smiles, he destroys.

Patrick Cantlay, Viktor Hovland, Tommy Fleetwood

Russell Henley
Was the 7th best player on TOUR in 2024 and does it from anywhere on the course but is one of the best fairway through green players. His stat profile looks eerily similar to 2018-2020 Webb Simpson (won 3x in those years). Made the cut in all four majors with a T7 and 5th at the U.S. Open and Open Championship.

🤩 Stars, Stars and more Stars

Collin Morikawa
With (7) Top 10s in 2024, he earned the most such finishes without a win across the PGA TOUR, LIV Golf and DP World Tour. He did everything but win, the metrics look great and he’s about to get his revenge.

Tyrrell Hatton
Sustained success across all tours and fields. Won on both LIV Golf and the DP World Tour in 2024 while putting together the best year of his career. I think he could be the 5th or 6th best player in the world right now.

Hideki Matsuyama, Tommy Fleetwood, Joaquin Niemann

Robert MacIntyre
Yeah, I’m doing it. Let’s call him a star. He won two different National Opens in 2024 including his own! Made a run into the TOUR Championship and then played stellar golf on the DP World Tour through the end of the year. If he’s not a star, he’s at least the best lefty in the world, right?

 😁 As Good As It Gets

Jon Rahm
Seems like he’s getting more comfortable with his position in professional golf. His last nine events of 2024 were played across LIV, the Olympics, a Major and the DP World Tour. In those nine, he won and finished inside the Top 10 in all of them.

Rory McIlroy
Just won 4x this year and it was, statistically, the 8th worst season of his career. Do I have to say more? Okay, I will. He had (13) Top 10 finishes in 27 starts so basically 50% of his events.

Xander Schauffele
Was the best player in Majors this past year and won two of them — Top 10s in all four. Has always had the talent but now it looks like he’s got the confidence. Terrifying.

Bryson DeChambeau
Seems to be winning at everything right now. He’s the reigning U.S. Open Champion and he’s the best golf creator on YouTube. Despite missing the cut at The Open, he gained a total of 41.39 strokes to the field in the four big ones. Only Scottie and Xander were better.

🥇 The Man, The Myth, The Legend

Scottie Scheffler
The best player in the world and it’s not even close. From a Strokes Gained standpoint, you could combine Rory McIlroy’s driving (+0.75), Xander Schauffele’s approach (+0.84), Harry Hall’s around-the-green (+0.40) and Tom Hoge’s putter (+0.02) and you’d still be losing to Scottie by 0.46 strokes per round.

If you took that Frankenstein star and played 100 rounds against Scottie, it would lose by 46 strokes. How does any human have a chance against this guy?

If it feels like this dominance has been going on for a while, it’s because it has. Over the last three seasons (2022-2024), Scheffler has gained a total of 606.34 strokes to the field. That’s, of course, the most during that stretch. It’s 376 more than Hideki Matsuyama who has played a similar number of rounds as Scheffler.

Does any superstar play as much as Scottie?

Look at the names who have played as frequently as Scottie. Most are playing to keep their jobs! Since 2022 there are only 15 golfers in the world to average 1+ stroke per round. Only one of those has played more rounds that Scottie … any guesses? Yeah, it’s Sungjae who is literally most well-known for how few days he takes off.

A quick Google search tells me that humans start to form memories around the age of four. So if you were born in 2005 or later (19 years ago, sheesh), you don’t remember Tiger Woods playing his best golf. And that is really just the tail end of it.

That makes 81,580,000 Americans that have never seen golf played this well. We are in a moment, enjoy it.