Month: March 2025

While it may not technically be a golf major, The Players Championship certainly has the feel of one. After all, it features a full field filled with the best players in the world and one of the most dramatic venues on the PGA Tour calendar with one of the most dramatic finishing stretches of golf holes.

This makes the PGA Tour’s flagship event a melting pot for one of the best tournaments of the year with some top storylines leading into it. These talking points touch on the action inside and outside the ropes given PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan will make his annual address to the media early in the week.

Questions surrounding the future of the men’s professional game will be asked, and only time will tell if they will actually be answered. Regardless of the commissioner’s state of the tour address, eyes will shift to the golf come Thursday where stars like Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Ludvig Åberg will all be in the spotlight.

For now, let’s take a look at some of the top storylines entering the 2025 Players Championship in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

2025 Players Championship storylines
Not one, not two…
Unlike the last two seasons, Scheffler arrives at this year’s Players without a trophy already under his belt. Small windows here and there have hindered his ability to enter the winner’s circle — whether it was the back-nine 41 at TPC Scottsdale or third-round 76 at the Genesis Invitational. It has largely been business as usual for the world No. 1, but it remains clear his game is not quite as sharp as it has been in years past. (At least not yet.)

Last year, he became the first player to successfully defend The Players and just the seventh to win the tournament multiple times. A win this week would pull him alongside Jack Nicklaus — past the likes of Tiger Woods and Fred Couples — who leads the pack with three.

State of the Tour
This week’s address will be spearheaded, as per usual, by Monahan. The PGA Tour boss has been a busy bee traveling to the White House for a working session alongside PGA Tour members Tiger Woods and Adam Scott along with President Donald Trump and Yasir Al-Rummayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

Monahan remains optimistic about the state of a potential deal between the parties to unite professional golf, but he may be the only one. Almost two full years into this saga, patience from players, fans and stakeholders dries up by the day with some of the biggest names believing a deal may not even be worth the headache at this stage.

“I think the narrative around golf — I wouldn’t say [the sport] needs a deal — I think the narrative around golf would welcome a deal in terms of just having all the best players together again,” McIlroy said at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. “But I don’t think the PGA Tour needs a deal. I think the momentum is pretty strong.

“TV has been good; TGL has been hopefully pretty additive to the overall situation. I answered this question at Torrey Pines two weeks ago, before, you know, the landscape might have looked a little different then than it does now over these past couple of weeks. I think a deal would still be ideal scenario for golf as a whole. But from a pure PGA Tour perspective, I don’t think it necessarily needs it.”

McIlroy’s march to the Masters
It’s been an inherently different McIlroy in 2025 compared to 2024 when he entered The Players battling the big miss off the tee and the big number on the scorecard. He went onto grab a share of the first-round lead but backtracked over the next 54 holes to barely finish inside the top 20.

McIlroy continues to preach patience and discipline and it has paid off with a win at Pebble Beach and top 20s in the next two signature events. Those will both be tested at TPC Sawgrass — as will his new and improved wedge play. which features plenty of off-speed shots and sawed-off swings.

A win would mark his second Players in the last six playings and make it the first time in McIlroy’s career that he would enter the Masters with multiple wins under his belt in a calendar year.

Åberg’s ascension
The Players marks the first time Åberg will visit one of the five biggest tournaments for the second time. It’s easy to forget given his status in the game that 2024 marked the Swedish superstar’s first strolls around golf courses such as TPC Sawgrass and Augusta National. Unsurprisingly, Åberg acquitted himself quite nicely in his Players debut notching a top-10 finish. He has only gotten better and more experienced since winning at the Genesis Invitational and contending at multiple major championships. With a win, he would join Si Woo Kim as players to win the PGA Tour’s flagship event in their second attempts.

Déjà vu?!
The last few Players Championships have featured leaderboards that look a lot like the … Arnold Palmer Invitational played the week prior. Last year, Wyndham Clark finished runner up to Scheffler in consecutive tournaments. A few years before that, Bryson DeChambeau won the API over Lee Westwood. Both players finished second and third respectively behind Justin Thomas at that year’s Players.

Few would be surprised if a similar occurrence materializes this year given the names atop the leaderboard at Arnie’s Place. Collin Morikawa, Russell Henley, Jason Day, Keegan Bradley, Correy Conners have all found success at TPC Sawgrass, and oh yeah, Scheffler and McIlroy were in the mix, too.

Struggling stars
Many of the usual suspects are still in the field, but they are no longer on the short list of contenders. The last couple of Players Championships have featured the likes of Matt Fitzpatrick, Sahith Theegala, Viktor Hovland and Max Homa on the first page of the leaderboard. These four players have combined for just one top-20 finish this year with that coming courtesy of Theegala’s T17 at the Genesis Invitational. Throw in a player like last year’s runner-up Xander Schauffele, who just returned from injury at Bay Hill and is still shedding some rust, and there is a slew of stars who are searching for answers.

Laurie Canter? Yes, Laurie Canter.
You might be wondering, “Why should I care about Laurie Canter?” It’s a fair question, but given the oddity of the golf world and fractured nature, his name deserves some shine. Following his playoff defeat at the South African Open a few weeks ago on the DP World Tour, Canter earned a spot in the field at the Players Championship.

This would not be noteworthy otherwise except that Canter’s appearance at TPC Sawgrass will mark the first time that someone who played on LIV Golf will play a PGA Tour event. Canter played with LIV in 2022 and served as a reserve option across the first two tournaments last year.

.PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan announced Tuesday that the league will begin implementing new pace-of-play policies starting next month. The rule change will first be introduced on the Korn Ferry Tour and PGA Tour Americas; it will include the assessment of stroke penalties for slow play violations.

Following the Masters, the PGA Tour itself will test a new policy allowing players to use distance-measuring devices during six tournaments between the year’s first and second majors, the latter being the PGA Championship. The PGA of America currently allows competitors in the PGA Championship to use such devices. The PGA Tour also plans to publish player specific pace-of-play statistics later in the year.

Justin Thomas said making such data public would “definitely” be effective in helping curb pace-of-play issues.

“It’s something I’ve said, if we put [the data] in the locker room or put it out [public], which would obviously end up getting out, but nobody wants to be known as [a slow player],” he explained. “I’m the first to admit I’m on the slow side of players. It bothers me, but I’ve talked to many officials about it, like I want to know why I’m slow because obviously the first thing that any slower player thinks is that they’re not slow.”

The PGA Tour’s pace of play came under fire during the West Coast Swing when the final group at The American Express took 5 hours, 40 minutes to complete its final round. One week later at the Farmers Insurance Open, a similar pacing issue occurred and drew further criticism.

Potential solutions were laid out during the week of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am by the PGA Tour, including the use of distance-measuring devices, increasing use of the video review center to expedite rulings and publishing pace-of-play data with accountability for slow players.

“After talking to some guys, I think you just have to start … giving guys actual penalties, whether it be strokes or FedExCup,” Collin Morikawa said. “What I’ve learned is that monetary fines are useless. We make so much money, and some guys frankly could care less about — I don’t know how much the fines are, but whatever X amount they are, and I think they care more about playing good golf and making sure they make the playoffs and making sure they make, you know, 70, 50, 30. That’s where it hits hard.

“And I see no issue with it. I think what is there to hide, right? If you’re slow, you know you’re slow. I mean, if you don’t know, then there’s an issue. To me, there’s no issue with letting it out, right? It’s only going to make things better because then you’re either going to have a target on you, put a little more pressure and hopefully you pick it up, or you get penalized. Like it’s very simple.”

2025 Players Championship picks, odds: Expert predictions, favorites to win in betting field at TPC Sawgrass
Patrick McDonald
2025 Players Championship picks, odds: Expert predictions, favorites to win in betting field at TPC Sawgrass
This past fall, the PGA Tour chose to adopt sweeping changes to its membership structure including the downsizing of tournament fields. One of the aims of this decision was to alleviate the pace-of-play problem on the PGA Tour. Although early returns were minimal, the league has seen improvement in recent weeks thanks to smaller fields and the utilization of twosomes.

“It’s easy to identify the problem,” Monahan said. “It’s a little bit harder to find the solution, just given the depth and breadth of everything that goes into pace of play. But we are committed to finding the right solutions and making progress on that front.”

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan did his best to fend off questions regarding the organization’s ongoing negotiations with LIV Golf’s financial backers, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, during a press conference Tuesday ahead of the 2025 Players Championship. While Monahan kept his cards close to the vest, he did say the PGA Tour would be willing to adopt certain aspects of LIV Golf in order to bring the two sides together.

“When you’re in the midst of complex negotiations, particularly when you may be near a breakthrough, there are ebbs and flows in the discussion,” Monahan said. “The most important thing is the mutual respect that we’ve built over the last couple of years. We appreciate Yasir [Al-Rummayyan]’s innovative vision, and we can see a future where we welcome him on to our board and work together to move the global game forward.

“As part of our negotiations, we believe there’s room to integrate important aspects of LIV Golf into the PGA Tour platform. We’re doing everything that we can to bring the two sides together.”

Monahan — along with PGA Tour members Tiger Woods and Adam Scott — participated in a four-hour working session with President Donald Trump and Al-Rummayyan, the PIF governor, a couple weeks ago. The commissioner has since been complimentary of the President and his willingness to help the deal along, which may include swerving potential roadblocks presented by the U.S. Department of Justice.

PGA Tour to allow distance measuring after Masters, test new pace-of-play policies before implementation
Patrick McDonald
PGA Tour to allow distance measuring after Masters, test new pace-of-play policies before implementation
Monahan confirmed a next meeting has yet to be scheduled.

While there appears to be headway in these discussions, one of the main talking points between the two leagues remains team golf’s place at the PGA Tour level. LIV Golf is currently made up of 13 teams owned and operated by playing captains such as Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau. Whether these squads or simply the concept of team golf continues — based on whatever form a unification between the tours takes — remains a question without a definitive answer.

“We will not [integrate LIV Golf] in a way that diminishes the strength of our platform or the very real momentum we have with our fans and our partners,” Monahan said. “So, while we’ve removed some hurdles, others remain. But like our fans, we still share the same sense of urgency to get to a resolution. Our team is fully committed to reunification.

“The only deal that we would regret is one that compromises the essence of what makes the game of golf and the PGA Tour so exceptional.”