December 19, 2025 2:55 pm

It’s that time of the year again when we take time to reflect. As far as the golfing industry is concerned, it has been a fantastic twelve months, particularly for this side of the pond.

Rory finally joins the club

The first major tournament, The Masters, proved to be gut wrenching, but eventually, inspiring. Rory McIlroy stood on the brink of greatness with a chance to join the most exclusive club of grand slam major winners. Only Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods were members. Rory had been knocking on the door for many years and with one round to go he had it in the bag. But the pressure got to him and in the end he stumbled into a playoff with his good friend Justin Rose.  When he finally got it over the line, the outpouring of emotion showed to all how much it meant to him.

The unfortunate freak injury that Scottie Scheffler suffered over the previous Christmas gave the rest of the PGA Tour a head start. But he made up for lost time by grabbing two major championships this year, The PGA Championship and The Open. He went on to win 4 other PGA Tour events as well as the prestigious PGA Tour player of the year award for the fourth consecutive year. It seems a racing certainty that he’ll add one more next year to match the record set by Tiger Woods.

The US Open was won by J J Spaun, the icing on the cake in an amazing year for the American. He also, very nearly won The Players at Sawgrass, but Rory saw him off on the Monday morning play off.

Tommy breaks through

Another European favourite made a breakthrough later in the season. Tommy Fleetwood was the most successful player never to win a PGA Tour event. He came close but threw the Travellers Championship to Kegan Bradley on the last hole. Finally he got that monkey off his back when he won the prestigious Tour Championship.

So, to the Ryder Cup and the hostile bear pit of Bethpage Black. It was always going to be tough. Unfortunately, the crowd did live up to their billing and were appalling at times. Over the first four sessions, the European players did the best thing they could and quietened the crowd by winning. And winning big! They led going into the 12 singles by 11.5 points to 4.5. No team had ever held such a big lead. More importantly, as it turned out, no team had lost such a big lead going into the final session. That afternoon went from bad to worse as the sea of red on the leaderboard threatened to drown the European players. It came down to the last couple of groups and thank goodness Shane Lowry holed his tricky six-footer on the last to claim the cup. Let’s hope we never have to go through that again!

LIV is still a shambles

The one negative of the year is still the absurd situation with LIV. The LIV name comes from the Roman numerals for 54, the number of holes they used to play in competitions. In an attempt to garner world ranking points for their players, they have now gone to the more conventional 72-hole format. Does that now mean it should be called the LXXII Tour? Not quite so snappy, is it?

The year was capped off in great style with the European team winning the Sports Personality of the Year Team Award. It’s an amazing achievement considering the team beat the Lionesses and the Red Roses, and it shows the popularity of our great sport.

The best was still to come. Rory McIlroy took the top gong of Sports Personality of the Year Award. The BBC Sports Personality of the Year show always used to be part of the run up to Christmas for me as a kid. It was the chance to relive the year’s achievements. This year, to see Rory take the title, was the star on top of the Christmas tree.

Merry Christmas everyone and enjoy your golf in 2026.

Jon Woodroffe, Master Professional – World of Golf London

Categorised in: Competitions, Golf News