The Tour Championship (and Tommy Fleetwood’s victory drought) is officially behind us, so it’s a good time to look back at the 2025 season.
Tomorrow, I will be taking a look at the PGA Tour players who emerged with breakout seasons.
Today? Not to be a Debbie Downer, but today is for those who are on the struggle bus.
It’s all relative here. A bad year for an elite player might be a career best for someone else.
Regardless, these players did not live up to expectations—including their own. None of them won a tournament or contended in a major. Some were rarely cracking the top 10.
If you asked each of them directly, they would be the first to admit their 2025 campaign was a disappointment.
This list is just for PGA Tour players. If you are looking for disappointing LIV players that golf fans have slowly forgotten about, you can find that story here.
For each player, I give his Data Golf chart. That shows his overall ranking (and Official World Golf Ranking) over the past few years. Data Golf includes all golf played professionally, including LIV, whereas the OWGR excludes LIV events from gaining points.
8. Xander Schauffele
Schauffele was injured throughout much of the year. He had a stellar season in 2024 so there is no panic at all.
However, Schauffele is held to a high standard—and for good reason. He opened the year as the second-best player in the world and has been hyper-consistent for several years now.
Ending the 2025 season down at No. 8 in Data Golf is a sizable step back and his worst mark since 2022. Schauffele did not have a single top-five finish the entire year, which is hard to believe.
I have no doubt he’ll bounce back next year.
7. Jordan Spieth
Spieth’s chart shows improvement from the depths of 2024. He climbed from outside the top 100 all the way to No. 30.
That is the good news.
The bad news is that Spieth is who he is now. He is a good player who can easily keep his Tour card. He is slightly above average in all Strokes Gained categories.
That is all he is.
Spieth is coming up on four years since his last win. He has gone 11 consecutive majors without a top-10 finish. He had four top-10s this season, two of them in lower-tier events.
I’m including him here because going winless and not even sniffing contention at a major should be considered struggling for someone of his reputation.
The reality? Spieth isn’t a star anymore.
6. Will Zalatoris
It’s sad to see what back injuries have done to Zalatoris, a player who went on an incredible run at the majors in 2021-2022.
He’s been scuffling for the past two years, falling all the way to No. 99 in Data Golf after not registering a single top-10 finish in 2025. That is down from No. 66 to start the year.
It’s an incomplete grade because Zalatoris got another back surgery this spring to repair two herniated discs. We haven’t seen him since the PGA Championship. Well, except for when he played Mr. Gilmore’s caddie in Happy Gilmore 2.
Zalatoris has a high ceiling. Hopefully he can get healthy soon.
5. Wyndham Clark
The 2023 U.S. Open champion was the No. 10 player in the world about 15 months ago.
He’s now down to No. 49, which begs the question of whether his major victory was a flash in the pan more than a sign of things to come.
Clark did make the 2023 Ryder Cup and 2024 Presidents Cup teams, but he didn’t come close to making the Ryder Cup team this time around.
A T4 in the Open Championship was pretty much the lone bright spot for Clark, who made more headlines for destroying locker rooms than being a disrupter on leaderboards.
4. Sahith Theegala
It’s a stretch to call Theegala a star based on his play, but he did make the U.S. Presidents Cup team in 2024 after having a productive season. He’s also among the most well-liked player on Tour.
To put it generously, this year did not go well.
Theegala fell from No. 37 to No. 202 in Data Golf, finishing just two tournaments in the top 20.
In the brave new world of professional golf, Theegala’s standing on Tour will be in jeopardy unless he quickly turns it around.
3. Collin Morikawa
Morikawa is starting to eerily mirror Jordan Spieth’s career. Both had a lot of success early on and then settled into “very solid but unspectacular pros” in the following years.
The 28-year-old Morikawa has no victories since October 2023. He started the year at No. 5 in Data Golf and now sits at No. 26, well outside of his potential. In his last 14 starts, he has just one top-10 finish (a T8 at the Rocket Mortgage Classic).
As with Spieth, Morikawa’s lack of distance seems to put a ceiling on his star power. He’s still a phenomenal iron player, and his floor is quite high because of that, but a lot of golf fans were hoping Morikawa could be more.
2. Tony Finau
In full transparency, I completely forgot about Tony Finau.
After he won five times between 2021-2023, Finau was a top-five player in the world. By the time 2025, came around he was a borderline top-20 player in the world.
Now? Avert your eyes. Finau is No. 124 in the world.
Incredibly, Finau has one top-10 finish in his last 26 starts. It’s been a failure on all fronts as his normally reliable ball striking has been just as mediocre as his putting.
1. Max Homa
I wrote about Homa earlier in the week, so you can get a more detailed breakdown here.
The short story is that Homa is going through a lot of change right now. He changed swing coaches last October, moved from Titleist to COBRA in January and parted ways with longtime caddie Joe Greiner in April.
After winning six times between 2019 and 2023 and starring for the Americans in the 2023 Ryder Cup, Homa started to lose his way last summer. The last 15 months or so have been a nightmare.
He started 2024 at No. 8 in Data Golf. He’s now No. 149.
Let’s hope Homa finds his way. Golf is better when he’s in the mix.
Do you agree with this list? Let me know below in the comments.
Top Photo Caption: Collin Morikawa hasn’t won since October 2023. (GETTY IMAGES/Jeff Robinson)
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