The PGA Tour season begins Thursday at The Sentry in Hawaii, with many of the top players in the world — but not an injured Scottie Scheffler — playing the obscenely hilly Plantation Course at Kapalua. So let’s have some fun. Here’s what will happen in golf in 2025.

Jon Rahm wins a major: There’s a middle ground between “Yeah, Rahm didn’t emotionally handle the criticism from his LIV departure well,” and “Rahm is still one of the three or four best golfers in the world.”

He had a strange, frustrating major campaign. That included missing Pinehurst with a foot infection. But take a look at the whole year. You’re welcome to downplay LIV results, but at some point, you’re just playing golf. Ten top fives. He should have won an Olympic gold medal but gave it away. He’s still Jon Rahm. He’s just getting over the change from being loved to being criticized.

Scottie Scheffler remains the best golfer, but the honeymoon ends: People are going to start getting irrational. He’s going to remain the clear best player. He’ll rack up top fives and top 10s and win multiple tournaments. He might even win a major!

But it’s going to be the year the masses start forgetting that nobody wins at Tiger Woods levels in this era, and they might never again. It will become, “Oh, Scottie, why aren’t you winning more majors?” … “Oh, Scottie, is your hand bothering you?” … “What’s up with the putting?” each time he finishes third instead of winning. Because that’s his standard now. The discourse will take the horrible transition from the coronation of 2024 to the unfair new expectations of 2025.

A repeat strange run of early winners: Last year, the entire start of the year was filled with journeyman winners or super-young surprises. This year will be the same.

Everything for the top stars will be about easing into form for the majors, and you’ll see tournaments like the Sony, the American Express, Torrey Pines and others won by cool rising studs like Max Greyserman or grinders like Denny McCarthy, and we’ll have the same conversation we had in March before all the top stars went on runs.

A PGA Tour-LIV deal will still not be finalized: But! Reports of an agreement will come out early in 2025. We just won’t get any details or real information until it goes through government approval, which will drag on until 2026.

Viktor Hovland will work with many more coaches: At the time this was typed, Hovland told a European outlet he is no longer working with coach Joe Mayo. After the wild 2024 season of Hovland working with four different instructors (that we know of), he’ll have another bizarre year of tinkering and trying to have the perfect season. It will be a better year than 2024, but still not near what we hoped in fall 2023 when he looked like the best player in the year.

Justin Thomas will have a big year: (We talked about this already).

Jordan Spieth will not: Wrist injuries are tough!

The Waste Management Open will be much less chaotic: It jumped the shark last year, and now tournament organizers know they have to rein it in or players will stop wanting to come.

The Ryder Cup will be more chaotic than ever: After hat-gate. After LIV drama. After events like the Waste Management and the general American golf social media culture only make the heckling, bro-ey, debaucherous fan experience seem like something to strive for to large chunks of the population — on top of the very real conversation already happening about the New York crowds at Bethpage being unruly — and the U.S. fans will play up to the fears. They’ll treat it as a challenge, and it will lead to a chaotic Ryder Cup week that goes perhaps too far. Something bad might happen.

A Højgaard will win a PGA Tour event: But not the one you think.

Bryson DeChambeau won’t have quite the same major success: DeChambeau as a top-10 golfer is here to stay. But there is a gap between DeChambeau’s returning to form and the discussion that he’s in the same conversation as Scheffler, Xander Schauffele or Rory McIlroy. He’s not quite in that group, and he won’t have a major top five.

Collin Morikawa again takes his place in golf’s top tier: Morikawa was the best golfer nobody talked about last year. He had 14 top 20s and seven top fives. He played in the final Sunday group at the Masters and the PGA Championship. He finished second behind Scheffler at the Tour Championship. He was as steady as anyone not named Scheffler or Schauffele. But he didn’t win once, and those Sunday struggles at Augusta and Valhalla were concerning.

But in 2025, Morikawa will win more tournaments than Schauffele or McIlroy. There’s always a mini-pantheon at the top of golf each year. In 2023, it was Rahm, Scheffler, McIlroy and Hovland. In 2024, it was Scheffler, Schauffele, McIlroy and arguably DeChambeau. In 2025, it will be Scheffler, Rahm, Schauffele and Morikawa. The question is, will Morikawa win a major?

Xander Schauffele wins the green jacket: This is the only specific prediction we’ll make. It’s golf. Predicting specific tournaments is nonsense. But Schauffele is suddenly a guy you know you have to fear in majors, and Augusta is the one major he plays best at. He’s gone T2, T3, 8, T10. And now he knows how to win. Schauffele wins a competitive Masters, and suddenly people will be recontextualizing his going from no majors to three in four starts. (Then, he won’t win again for a bit.)

Sam Burns plays in two major final Sunday pairings: He doesn’t win.

Quail Hollow will strangely deliver: Quail Hollow has become one of the more dunked-on big courses in the U.S., which will only increase at this year’s PGA Championship. The reason is probably just overexposure. It has an annual PGA Tour event. It hosted the 2022 Presidents Cup. And a lot of golf nerds just don’t like it. But it tends to create great winners and good golf tournaments, and Quail will give us a strangely riveting PGA that leads to some referendums on what we use to determine “good” professional courses.

Much will be written about Oakmont returning us to above-par U.S. Opens: It will not. That is just not how the USGA seems to set up the U.S. Opens anymore. Somebody will win at 8-under. The majority of the field will be above par, and it will be an incredible Open, playing with the perfect mix of risk and reward, but most of the contenders actually shoot below par most days.

Rory McIlroy does not win a major: I’m sorry. Pinehurst pushed me too far. I cannot predict it until it happens.

Brooks Koepka and Jordan Spieth will be left off the Ryder Cup team: Neither will play well enough to truly be in contention at all, leaving captain Keegan Bradley’s hands tied.

Aaron Rai makes the Ryder Cup team: There’s always one or two “Huh, really?” golfers on the European team, and this year it will be an Englishman who can play some of the hottest rounds on tour. He’s an exceptional ball striker and has been around for a long time. He’ll be this year’s version of Russell Henley on the U.S. Presidents Cup team. Speaking of …

Russell Henley remains the Scheffler partner: Henley and Scheffler were a surprisingly perfect pairing at Royal Montreal, and Bradley was on the team to see it up close. He sticks with it, and they still thrive.

Keegan Bradley will play well enough to earn a captain’s pick, but he won’t do it: Chaos prediction! Bradley will end the year as one of the seven to 12 best American players and put himself in a position to easily make the team most years, but he’ll be so focused on not being the guy who picked himself he will leave himself off. And the man he does pick instead will end up being what costs the U.S. Bradley’s selflessness will be his most criticized choice.

That’s right. The U.S. loses on home soil: After the last few years when the golf world has seemed to conclude the Ryder Cup is broken because nobody can ever win overseas anymore, the Europeans will knock off a messy U.S. team at Bethpage.

The world will melt down.

(Top photo of Collin Morikawa, right, with Patrick Cantlay: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)

Caitlin Clark. A’ja Wilson. Breanna Stewart.

Ratings growth. Increased attendance. Record merchandise sales.

It was a historic year across women’s basketball with professional and college games breaking into the broader cultural zeitgeist like never before. Before turning the page to 2025, our team of The Athletic women’s basketball writers are handing out their superlatives from the year that was. They highlight some of their favorite games and performances, and even tell you what they’re watching for as the new year gets underway.

Best game

Sabreena Merchant: Game 1 of the WNBA Finals. The drama of Minnesota’s comeback (and the fourth-quarter replay reviews) set the stage for a tense, back-and-forth five games with so many big moments, highlighted by Courtney Williams’ four-point play. Even though the Lynx didn’t win the championship, they gave us a series that will live on in our memories.

Chantel Jennings: National title game between Iowa and South Carolina. This game was most memorable because of how historic it felt in the moment. Sitting courtside, even as it became clear that South Carolina would cap its undefeated season in style, everyone understood we were witnessing history. My guess of 15 million viewers (a number that would’ve felt unbelievable even a few years earlier) was still nearly 4 million short of the women’s title game viewership totals.

Ben Pickman: I agree with Sabreena here. While Sabrina Ionescu’s game winner in Game 3 of the 2024 WNBA Finals makes this a close discussion, the madness that ensued in Game 1, coupled with Williams’ heroics at the end of regulation, lift that game above all others.

Best individual performance

Pickman: With all due respect to the countless records broken by Clark, Wilson and Angel Reese this year, Arike Ogunbowale orchestrated the best individual performance of the year. Sure, it came in the WNBA All-Star Game, but going up against Team USA, Ogunbowale set an All-Star Game record with 34 points, all of which came in the second half. Her 21 points in the third quarter were the most in a quarter in All-Star Game history, and the variety in which she scored was the best stretch of offensive basketball I saw in 2024.

High Level MVP Buckets 🤌

34 PTS, 6 REB, 6 AST for Arike Ogunbowale

2024 @ATT #WNBAAllStar | #WelcometotheW pic.twitter.com/MQbiC4r4UX

— WNBA (@WNBA) July 21, 2024

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Merchant: Nyara Sabally’s third quarter in Game 5 of the WNBA Finals. Not the most prolific performance by any means, but her 9 points in less than five minutes — as New York busted out a previously unused three-big lineup — changed the game and helped the Liberty win their first title in franchise history.

Jennings: Clark’s first quarter against Michigan. Barring any kind of historic meltdown, everyone knew Clark would break the Division I scoring record against Michigan in February. But it was her unbelievable first quarter, starting the game 3-of-3 from the floor and capping it with a logo 3 to break the record, that felt like something out of a movie. She ended the night with a program-record 49 points (breaking teammate Hannah Stuelke’s record of 48 from just a few games earlier).

The moment Caitlin Clark broke the NCAA DI women’s basketball all-time scoring record. 👏 @IowaWBB | @bigten pic.twitter.com/f2t7ISYjyA

— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) February 16, 2024

Favorite reporting moment

Jennings: Gold medal game between Team USA and France. Diana Taurasi started the Olympic cycle by saying that not enough people were talking about the challenge of playing France in France, and Team USA got a taste of that in the gold medal game this summer. The energy and electricity in Bercy Arena was unforgettable, and hearing the French fans sing their national anthem ahead of the game gave me chills. It was nail-biter of a game, and for a decent portion of the second half, I wondered if I was really going to be writing a game story on how the run of eight straight gold medals for the American women was ending. But Team USA pulled out the victory as Gabby Williams’ shot that would’ve tied the game was just a few inches short of the 3-point line. The arena’s energy ebbed and flowed with every possession and was unlike anything I’d ever felt.

Pickman: I know I speak for the three of us in saying how fortunate we were to attend so many memorable moments in women’s basketball in 2024. But if we’re narrowing it down to just one moment of our own reporting, I’ll take breaking the news of Candace Parker’s retirement to Breanna Stewart. Parker retired on the first day of WNBA training camp, and the Aces announced the news not even three minutes before Stewart’s first media scrum of the season. I remember reading the release about Parker’s retirement over and over in the intervening minutes because I was so surprised by its timing — and really to ensure I wasn’t being punked. Then, I asked Stewart about it, and her reaction was one that I and the internet will remember for a while.

Candace Parker has retired from the WNBA.

I broke the news to her. Here’s her instant reaction ⬇️ https://t.co/t9CpY5wrnr pic.twitter.com/WD8unfrBdt

— Ben Pickman (@benpickman) April 28, 2024

Merchant: Covering the last Pac-12 tournament. For all of the conference’s lifers, like Tara VanDerveer, it gave the strange feeling of attending one’s own funeral. It was emotional to celebrate the greatness of the conference with past legends in attendance, especially in a year when there were so many individual highs for the Pac-12. It was a reminder of how our job in covering this sport is to tell the stories of the people involved, and when those people (broadcasters, administrators, families, etc.) are seeing their lives change in a meaningful way because of forces beyond their control, it hits you.

Best quote

Pickman: I’ll throw two out there. The first came in the WNBA Finals when I asked Courtney Williams if she knew what it meant to be “Minnesota nice.” She laughed and responded, “I ain’t never heard that.” Chantel is the Midwesterner in this roundtable, but I — as a New Yorker — had just assumed it was a rite of passage for anyone living in the state to know what “Minnesota nice” means. But alas. On another note, Cheryl Miller gave a rare news conference ahead of coaching Team WNBA in July’s All-Star Game and gave a particularly strong response when I asked her about the WNBA receiving a $2.2 billion TV rights contract. The line that stands out: “A two’s nice, an eight would be better,” referring to her belief the WNBA is still not receiving enough in its media rights deals.

Cheryl Miller was asked about reporting about the WNBA’s next national media rights deal at $2.2 billion.

“Not enough, not even close. Two’s nice, an eight would be better… Because they know… All you have to do is look at college basketball and what’s coming next.” pic.twitter.com/TkWDb32fc7

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) July 20, 2024

Merchant: Everything Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said in her postgame presser after losing Game 5 of the WNBA Finals. From calling out the referees and saying the game was “stolen” to subtly shading New York for needing 28 years to win one title while Minnesota was chasing its fifth, the full 15 minutes was raw emotion at its finest.

Jennings: By the time coaches and players get to the Final Four, there aren’t many questions that can be asked in a news conference that they haven’t heard already. But Dawn Staley decided to switch things up in Cleveland when she kicked off her Final Four presser with a highly serious question for reporters: Is it lay down or lie down? And then, she dropped this gem: “Someone taught me you lie to get laid, right? Sorry. So excited to be here!”

Is it lying or laying?

For those of you who missed @dawnstaley’s opening statement today and need a laugh:@wachfox @GamecockWBB pic.twitter.com/mJxA2CaEF4

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— amanda (@amanda_1815) April 4, 2024

What we’re looking forward to in 2025

Merchant: How do the Las Vegas Aces respond after coming up short of their expectations in 2024? If New York and Las Vegas are supposed to be the great rivals of this generation, then it’s the Aces’ turn to elevate their game and figure out how to once again play championship-worthy basketball for a full season. On a related note, the South Carolina Gamecocks lost their first game in more than a calendar year to UCLA, but they still appear poised to claim their second straight title. Can they end the eight-year repeat drought in the NCAA Tournament?

Jennings: The finances of women’s college hoops are going to drastically change in 2025. For starters, women’s college basketball will finally receive units starting during the 2025 NCAA Tournament (assuming the Division I membership approves the plan in January). Also during the 2025-26 academic year, revenue sharing will hit college sports. It’s an unprecedented moment in NCAA history, and it could shift the power balance in women’s college basketball. The name, image and likeness model will change significantly as the NCAA will need to approve all NIL deals, and the “pay-to-play” NIL model, as many coaches have called the current structure, will fall by the wayside. Money makes the college sports world go ’round, and 2025 is a year in which the money — especially in women’s college basketball — is going to change.

Pickman: One on-court matter: After an All-WNBA first-team season, what happens with Clark’s development and the Indiana Fever, more broadly, under new coach Stephanie White? One off-court: After a year of explosive growth in women’s basketball in 2024, what will TV ratings, attendance, merchandise sales and overall business changes look like next year?

(Photos of Caitlin Clark and A’ja Wilson: Scott Taetsch / NCAA Photos via Getty Images, Ethan Miller / Getty Images)

GLENDALE, Ariz. — There were two Boise States on the field on New Year’s Eve.

One was a conference champion living out a dream season. A team carried to the College Football Playoff on the back of star running back Ashton Jeanty, and a storied program atop the Group of 5 conferences once more.

The other Boise State was an outmanned G5 roster putting forth a valiant but futile effort against a better and more talented Penn State squad.

Both versions coexisted in No. 3 Boise State’s 31-14 loss to No. 6 Penn State in the Playoff quarterfinals at the Fiesta Bowl on Tuesday night. The first deserves to be celebrated. The latter provided Big Ten runner-up Penn State a seemingly easier path to the semifinals than Big Ten champion and No. 1 seed Oregon or SEC champion and No. 2 seed Georgia, and will further fuel the narrative that an imperfectly expanded Playoff needs to adjust its seeding format as soon as possible.

For Broncos fans, and those inclined to root for Cinderella, a disappointing and frustrating performance won’t diminish a magical run. No, Jeanty did not break Barry Sanders’ single-season rushing record, coming up 27 yards shy in his lowest rushing output of the season. No, the sport’s preeminent underdog couldn’t pull off yet another Fiesta Bowl upset, on the same field that hosted the program’s defining victories. But 2024 will go down as one of the most memorable seasons in the history of Boise State football.

“I’m so proud of this team. It didn’t go our way tonight, but they re-established the standard in Boise to be a light on the hill, to the country, that had been lost for a little bit,” said head coach Spencer Danielson. “That’s a legacy that can never be taken from them.”

For the other CFP teams that weren’t on the field Tuesday, or fans of college football at-large — an admittedly hard-to-satisfy lot — the matchup underscored a crucial flaw in a system meant to reward conference champions, but designed before realignment thinned the Power 5 to a top-heavy Power 4.

The fault in this Playoff formula, with byes going to the four highest-ranked conference champions, was obvious well before the teams were splashed across ESPN on Selection Sunday, including ninth-ranked Boise State jumping all the way to the No. 3 seed courtesy of a Mountain West championship. It created a bracket where No. 1 Oregon is set to face sixth-ranked Ohio State, which is seeded eighth, and No. 2 Georgia meets fifth-ranked Notre Dame, which is seeded seventh, on New Year’s Day.

Those who understood the format have been warning of these unintended consequences for months. But seeing is believing, and Penn State drove that reality home in the Fiesta Bowl as the fourth-ranked team but No. 6 seed against the ninth-ranked but No. 3 seed Broncos. In a multi-billion-dollar tournament that was years in the making, it was simple negligence (or maybe stubbornness?) that allowed a higher-ranked but lower-seeded team to enter a neutral site, national championship quarterfinal as an 11.5-point favorite — a game the Nittany Lions ultimately won by 17.

“Obviously tonight, we didn’t execute the way we needed to, to win a heavyweight fight like we knew this was going to be,” Danielson said.

Boise State committed four turnovers and 13 penalties. (Mark J. Rebilas / Imagn Images)

Boise State wasn’t a charity case. It outgained Penn State 412 yards to 387, and plenty of its problems — including 13 penalties for 90 yards — were self-inflicted. But a Broncos team that lost only eight turnovers all season committed four on Tuesday, and it benefitted from an opponent that played with its food for the better part of three quarters. Penn State led from wire to wire, and outside of the lead briefly being cut to 17-14 early in the second half, the Nittany Lions felt in control the entire way.

“I think the Big Ten has prepared our guys,” Penn State coach James Franklin said. “Boise is a really good football team. … We were not taking them lightly. We talk about the maturity of our football team — I think that shows up.”

The loss isn’t an indictment of Boise State, or the 12-win season that preceded it. And this isn’t the same debate as those kvetching about Indiana and SMU earning at-large bids. There is no good-faith argument that the Broncos didn’t deserve a Playoff spot and a chance to compete for a national title.

This team exemplified the bigger-tent approach this sport has desperately lacked for decades. The same praises and criticisms that elevated Boise also apply to No. 4 seed Arizona State out of the Big 12, which was slotted 12th in the final CFP rankings and will play third-ranked and No. 5 seed Texas in Wednesday’s Peach Bowl. But the Broncos had the first crack at proving the doubters wrong, validating their “Please count us out” T-shirts. Instead, they left it even harder to justify a system that made the No. 5 and 6 seeds — and losing a conference championship — look more advantageous than the top two spots.

Boise State has nothing to apologize for. Offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter acknowledged to The Athletic last week that the Playoff’s seeding system will likely be changed, perhaps as early as next season. But it’s not as if the Broncos orchestrated or exploited the system.

“We didn’t make those (bye) rules,” Koetter said. “I’m smart enough to realize we might not be the third-best team, but we definitely deserve to be in there.”

Danielson echoed that sentiment after the game on Tuesday, just as the clock struck midnight back on the East Coast, ringing in the new year. College football in 2025 is better for having an expanded Playoff, widening the path to compete for a national title. Boise State earned its entry to that path this season, just like SMU and Penn State and Georgia and every other team in the field. That shouldn’t change moving forward.

Even if — at the same time, on the same field — Boise State was also the reason that path is bound to look a little different the next time the Broncos get there.

GO DEEPER

‘This is jubilation’: Penn State relishes Fiesta Bowl win as Playoff charge continues

(Top photo of Ashton Jeanty: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)