Masters 2025: Answering some big questions for the rest of the golf season
The 2025 Masters is in the books, and it didn’t disappoint.
After a roller-coaster final round, Rory McIlroy made a birdie on the first playoff hole to beat Justin Rose and complete the career Grand Slam. Rounding out the top five were Patrick Reed in third, Scottie Scheffler in fourth and Sungjae Im and Bryson DeChambeau tied for fifth.
What does the win mean for the rest of McIlroy’s season? Who else stood out? Who are the favorites for the remaining majors, starting with the PGA Championship in mid-May?
Here are some of the biggest questions coming out of the Masters and looking forward to the rest of the 2025 season.
Where does Rory go from here for the rest of the year?
Mark Schlabach: You have to wonder if, after waiting for so long to capture a green jacket and complete the career Grand Slam and ending a drought of more than 10 years without a major championship, this doesn’t bust the lid off Rory’s career.
McIlroy has been one of the most talented and accomplished golfers of his generation, winning more than 50 times around the globe and reaching No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking for more than 100 weeks during his career.
The fact he hadn’t won a major since the 2014 PGA Championship might have kept him from joining the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Tiger Woods and others as the truly best golfers in history.
Now, McIlroy is no longer carrying a 1,000-pound anvil around his neck every time he goes to a major, especially when he makes the drive down Magnolia Lane at Augusta National Golf Club.
“Today was difficult,” McIlroy said after Sunday’s round. “I was unbelievably nervous this morning. Really nervous on the first hole, as you witnessed with the double, but as I said, that sort of calmed me down and I was able to bounce back and show that resilience that I’ve talked about a lot.
“Look, it was a heavy weight to carry, and thankfully now I don’t have to carry it, and it frees me up and I know I’m coming back here every year, which is lovely.”
Paolo Uggetti: Before any questions were asked in McIlroy’s post-round news conference, he turned to the media with a smile and a question: “What are we going to talk about next year?”
Don’t worry, Rory. The conversation has already shifted to how many more majors he can potentially add to his total, not just in the rest of his career, but this year. But I’ll play devil’s advocate here and wonder how McIlroy will be able to come down from the high of this victory.
All you needed to see was McIlroy’s reaction on the 18th green Sunday to know how much of a weight off his shoulders this was. So while yes, I agree that he can be freed up now and focus on adding to his major total, the beauty and agony of this sport is that he will be starting once again from scratch come the next tournament.
McIlroy has been so adamantly committed to the process during this 11-year major drought, especially in the past four years, in order to keep giving himself chances. Now, if he wants to continue to add to his tally of both PGA Tour wins and major championships, it will be fascinating to see how his hunger will evolve and whether it will remain at the same level.
The good news? No one is playing better golf than he is right now, and the majors this year — Quail Hollow (won there four times), Oakmont and Royal Portrush (home game) — all set up in his favor.
Other than Rory winning, what’s your biggest takeaway from the Masters this year?
Schlabach: World No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler didn’t have his best stuff at Augusta National Golf Club last week, but he was good enough to finish solo fourth at 8 under. Scheffler’s iron play was just a tad off from his world-class form, and he never seemed to get any momentum rolling until Sunday’s 3-under 69 nearly got him into the hunt when McIlroy was making a mess of the second nine.
Scheffler hit 62% of greens in regulation and 71% of fairways over 72 holes. He ranked 26th among players who made the cut in strokes gained: approach (.630) and 58th in strokes gained: off the tee (-.110).
“I think it was easily a week in which I could have gotten frustrated with either how I was playing or how I was swinging or stuff going on on the course, not hitting it where I was looking,” Scheffler said. “I was just proud of the way we hung in there and put up a good fight. … I think this was the best I was mentally all year. I think my game just wasn’t there.”
Scheffler was attempting to join Nicklaus as the only golfers to win a green jacket three times in four years.
It will be interesting to see whether McIlroy can chase down Scheffler for the top spot in the world rankings this season. Scheffler was clearly the best player in the world in 2024, but he hasn’t yet won this year. Rory is on his way to doing what Scottie did last year with three victories at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Players Championship and the Masters.
Uggetti: The golf world may be split in half, but man, do the major championships continue to be in such a good position right now. Think about it: Four times a year, not only do the best players in the world finally get to tee it up against each other, but they also bring with them a treasure trove of storylines to chew on.
As time has gone on since LIV’s inception, the notion of a rivalry between the two sides (at least on the course) has dissipated in place of more compelling storylines that the meeting of the tours on the biggest stages brings.
This year’s Masters, like last year’s U.S. Open — and really, the past few years of major championships — has served to push the cream of the crop to the top and given us dramatic finishes and winners who have felt like the right ones. The majors remain the tournaments with all the intrigue and all the power.
Perhaps, one day, reunification will come to fruition and the wider game will be better for it. But for now, the majors feel more heightened than ever, and they have continued to deliver.
Biggest winner(s) from the Masters?
Schlabach: Besides McIlroy, I’ll go with a couple of aging former Masters champions: Zach Johnson and Bubba Watson.
Johnson, 49, had fallen to 289th in the world rankings after missing eight cuts in 2024 and not doing much of anything this season, outside of tying for 21st in the Sony Open in Hawaii in January. He didn’t play much golf last fall while watching his son play his senior year of high school football, and he seemed to have an eye on PGA Tour Champions when he turns 50 next year.
Plus, he has been battling a right elbow injury since last summer.
The 2007 Masters champion made six birdies in an eight-hole stretch and carded a 6-under 66 on Saturday, his best round at Augusta National. He tied for eighth at 5 under, his best finish on the PGA Tour since 2021.
“I still feel like I have it,” Johnson said. “I don’t know if pride is the right thing, proud, whatever you want to call it.”
Watson, 46, hadn’t done much of anything in the LIV Golf League — his best finish this season was a tie for 12th in Saudi Arabia in the opener. He’s currently 36th in the individual points standings.
But the two-time Masters winner matched his career low with a 4-under 68 on Sunday and tied for 14th at 3 under. It was his best finish at Augusta National since tying for 12th in 2019.
Watson was making his 17th start at the Masters, and his course knowledge was a bonus.
“You’re always trying to get information,” Watson said. “But as you get older that information doesn’t do as good as it used to.”
Uggetti: If we’re going for the non-Rory division, it’s easy to look toward Max Homa, who finished in a tie for 12th.
Perhaps no one was searching for a semblance of a positive week on the golf course coming into this week more than Homa, who had missed five straight cuts before arriving in Augusta and had been forthright about how much he was fighting his swing.
So, how do you get right?
For Homa, it appears the answer is playing Augusta National four days in a row. Over four rounds, Homa broke par every single time.
“It’s awesome. This has been just not fun at all,” Homa said after making the cut Friday. “It does feel good to not beat myself out here.”
Homa clearly feels some level of comfort here, and he showed it. A year after he finished in a tie for third, his T-12 finish earns him an automatic invite for next year.
Of course, Homa isn’t just looking for positive weeks like this one; he’s after consistency and winning. There’s plenty of work left to do.
“Tough times don’t last; tough people do,” Homa said. “At the end of the day, if you get out of your own head it’s just one event. You can miss the cut by one and feel like garbage. It sucks. But always closer than you think.”
Biggest disappointment from the Masters
Schlabach: It seems that the PGA Tour and LIV Golf League aren’t anywhere close to resolving their differences and reuniting the sport, so we’ll probably get to see all of the world’s best golfers competing against each other only three more times this season.
While there were plenty of big names who missed the cut at the Masters, LIV Golf League captains Brooks Koepka, Cameron Smith and Dustin Johnson were among the biggest.
Koepka, a five-time major championship winner, missed the cut by making a quadruple-bogey 8 on the 18th hole of the second round. Koepka, who has three wins in the PGA Championship and two in the U.S. Open, has finished outside the top 25 in his past six major championships.
Johnson, who captured the 2016 U.S. Open and 2020 Masters, missed the cut with rounds of 2-over 74 and 1-over 73, so it wasn’t like he played awful. But DJ has missed the cut in four of his past six starts in majors and didn’t finish in the top 30 in the other two.
Smith’s departure to the LIV Golf League was one of the most surprising because he seemed to be at the peak of his career after capturing the 150th Open Championship at St. Andrews in Scotland in 2023. He tied for sixth at the 2024 Masters but then tied for 63rd at the PGA Championship, tied for 32nd at the U.S. Open and missed the cut at The Open.
Too-early favorites for the rest of the majors?
Schlabach: McIlroy will probably be the favorite at the next major championship, the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, on May 15-18. He has won the Wells Fargo Championship at the same course four times, in 2010, 2015, 2021 and 2024, and set the course record twice with a 62 in 2010 and 61 five years later. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see him add his sixth major and third PGA Championship title next month. I’ll go with Rory to win a second straight major next month.
I’m expecting Scheffler to have a couple of victories under his belt by the time he arrives at the U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club outside Pittsburgh on June 12-15. He had three straight top-10 finishes in the major before tying for 41st at Pinehurst No. 2 last year. Players aren’t going to be able to bomb it around Oakmont because of its narrow fairways and myriad bunkers, so give me someone who can control his ball and work it both ways. Scheffler isn’t going through an entire season without a major championship victory.
McIlroy will also be a sentimental favorite when the Open Championship returns to Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland on July 17-20. He missed the cut the last time The Open was played there in 2019, carding a quadruple-bogey 8 on the first hole and a triple-bogey 7 on the last in an opening round of 8-over 79. He tried to battle back and make the cut with a 6-under 65 in the second round but missed the weekend by one. Keep an eye on Irishman Shane Lowry, who won the previous Open Championship at Royal Portrush. He’s playing great golf, too.
Uggetti: Mark has the favorites nailed, so I’ll add some names that are worth considering.
Ludvig Åberg has now finished inside the top 10 at Augusta two years in a row, and though he has had only one other top-12 finish at a major in eight tries, his game is tailor-made for pretty much every possible major championship setup. The 2025 Genesis Invitational winner has the ballstriking to compete with the likes of Scheffler and McIlroy, and he has shown repeatedly that even when down late on a Sunday, he has the firepower to make a charge.
Keep a close eye too on Xander Schauffele. This week at Augusta, Schauffele once again did not look like he was fully back in peak form following the rib injury that sidelined him earlier this season, but he still gritted out a T-8 finish after an opening 73.
And let’s, of course, not forget about who was leading the tournament after two holes Sunday. DeChambeau will not let this loss deter him from continuing to threaten at major tournaments. Quail Hollow and Oakmont are likely to be setups that favor DeChambeau’s length and give him a chance to add to his own major total.
Source: espn.com