CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA | Scottie Scheffler lived up to an old chestnut in collecting his third career major championship: It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.
Quail Hollow has a certain rhythm that requires mastering to win, and Scheffler was in sync with its challenge at the PGA Championship. The drivable par-4 14th and reachable par-5 15th demand taking advantage of or falling behind. Then 16, 17 and 18 – the Green Mile – demand hanging on for dear life.
Nobody handled it any better than Scheffler, who played 14 and 15 in 9-under and the Green Mile in a respectable 1-over.
“This back nine will be one that I remember for a long time,” Scheffler said after pulling away from ties on the home stretch both weekend rounds. “It was a grind out there. I think at one point on the front I maybe had a four- or five-shot lead, and making the turn, I think I was tied for the lead. So to step up when I needed to the most, I’ll remember that for a while.”
While none was bigger than Scheffler collecting his third major in impressive fashion, the 2025 PGA Championship delivered its share of winners and losers:
BOGEY: Star power outage. Scottie Scheffler was the only OWGR top-10 player among the top 47 on the leaderboard entering the weekend, and only the top four made the cut. It left a leaderboard looking more like a Texas Open than a major championship. Was this Quail Hollow or Sleepy Hollow? Of the top 16 leaders at the midpoint, only two ranked among the top 45 in the world (Robert MacIntyre at No. 22 was the other). The average world ranking of the other 14 leaders was 80.9. Fortunately, it got better in the end.
BIRDIE: Bryson DeChambeau. A fixture on major leaderboards, he remains the most consistent player when he shows up on big stages. Unfortunately, part of his consistency is weekend sloppiness that he only got away with when McIlroy finished sloppier at Pinehurst. He blew it this time with a badly misjudged mis-club on the par-3 17th on Saturday, opening the door for Scheffler to slam it in his face. He’ll be hungry at Oakmont.
BOGEY: Jon Rahm. It was nice to see the Spaniard reactivated on a major stage, climbing into the lead both Saturday and Sunday. He putted superbly in erasing Scheffler’s five-shot lead before two badly missed birdie chances at 14 and 15 doomed his bid to send him to Royal Portrush with an opportunity to complete the career slam. Despite his late implosion, he’s likely locked up a Ryder Cup spot.
BOGEY-BOGEY-BOGEY: The Green Mile. The punishing three-hole finishing stretch lived up to its reputation, dooming a lot of hopes from Tyrrell Hatton on Friday to DeChambeau on Saturday to Rahm on Sunday. How hard was it? The group of Mackenzie Hughes (a club member), Erik van Rooyen and Michael Block played the Green Mile in a collective 17-over the first two rounds.
BIRDIE: Harris English. He picked a good time to throw a 65 up on the board Sunday, vaulting 34 places up the leaderboard that ultimately earned him a share of runner-up that not only locks up a Masters invite for next year but also a lot of Ryder Cup points to push him inside the top 12 and strongly into captain’s pick consideration.
BIRDIE: Davis Riley. Two of the “no-name” chasers were clinging to runner-up chances before a bogey on the 72nd hole by J.T. Poston frittered away an automatic invitation to the Masters in 2026. Riley, however, played the last two holes in 1-under with a big par save on 18 to lock up an Augusta return.
BOGEY: Rory McIlroy. The dream of a grand slam season died quickly with a substandard performance on a course he’s won on four times. His best weapon, the driver, was the culprit having failed pre-tournament testing for conformity. McIlroy compounded the bad look by not commenting after any of the four rounds.
BOGEY: Secrecy. Reportedly nine drivers failed testing before the tournament, and we know McIlroy’s and Scheffler’s were two of them. The insistence of golf organizations to keep all things “disciplinary” secret only serves to create more headaches. Every other professional sport in the world is transparent about things like this, and they are all better for it.
BIRDIE: Lost Boys. Matthew Fitzpatrick and Max Homa have been stuck in the wilderness struggling for the last year as the once top-six players watched their world rankings plummet outside the top 80. At Quail Hollow they found a spark and a pulse, with Fitz posting T8 while Homa rose before fading on the weekend.
ACE: Si Woo Kim. The demonstrative Korean is becoming a habitual long-range bomber. His hole-in-one on the 252-yard par-3 sixth at Quail Hollow was the longest in major championship history, breaking the 245-yard record by Gil Morgan in the 1978 PGA at Oakmont’s No. 8. Third on the list was Si Woo’s 238-yard ace on the par-3 17th at Royal Troon in last year’s Open.
BIRDIE: Joaquin Niemann. The LIV bots have been calling him a “top-10 player” for so long you forget that the Chilean had never actually posted a top 10 in a major championship. Well, he can at least check that off his list after he posted a solid 68 Sunday and a slew of guys backed up to let him earn his first yellow square on Wikipedia with a T8 finish.
BOGEY: Shane Lowry. On the heels of a bad finish to lose at the Truist Championship and playing a course he’s never loved, Lowry’s frustration and feelings erupted when he was denied relief with his ball buried in a pitch mark on No. 8 Friday. He slammed his club in the ground after chunking and shouted a profanity at “this place.” The ensuing bogey proved pivotal in the world No. 10 missing the cut by a shot.
BIRDIE: Jhonattan Vegas. Admit it – we all figured the Venezuelan would fade away after jumping to the early lead with an opening 64. To his credit, he hung in there all week and finished a career-best tied fifth.
BOGEY: Jordan Spieth. In his ninth attempt to complete the career slam, Spieth checked out early with a missed cut. His chances always seemed better at upcoming venues Aronomink or Frisco (in his native Texas), but it was a disappointing sputter to one of the big storylines nonetheless.
BOGEY: Hideki Matsuyama. His active streak of making the cut in 19 consecutive majors going back to pre-pandemic at the 2019 Open came to an end at Quail Hollow, where he was runner-up in 2017 PGA. The new active cut streak leader is Xander Schauffele with 12.
BOGEY: Justin Thomas. The 2017 PGA champ at Quail Hollow came into the week on a relative heater having won the RBC Heritage and co-runner-up at the Truist in consecutive signature events. He rather unceremoniously missed the cut.
BIRDIE: Captains choice. Keegan Bradley (U.S.) and Luke Donald (Europe) will lead their respective teams in the Ryder Cup at Bethpage in September. They fared better than many of their prospective players, with Bradley (T8) contending and Donald (T60) posting his best major finish since the 2016 Open Championship.
BIRDIE: Pádraig Harrington. Whose bright idea was it to schedule a senior major opposite a real major, thus forcing past PGA champions to choose whether to play with the big boys or compete with the old boys? John Daly, Vijay Singh, David Toms and Davis Love III chose the Regions Tradition, as did David Duval who blew off his role as ESPN’s lead analyst. Only Harrington opted to give it a go at Quail, declining a spot in what he calls PGA Tour Champions’ “silliest major.” “I believe my limited chance of winning this event is much more important than my good chance of winning that event,” Harrington said before missing the cut by a shot.
BIRDIE: Xander Schauffele. The defending champ had finished inside the top 20 in 12 straight majors and 24 of 31 career major starts prior to Sunday. While his double on 16 spoiled his backdoor extension of that streak by one shot, his active made-cut streak on the PGA Tour reached 64 consecutive – the sixth longest in PGA Tour history.
DOUBLE BOGEY: Mudballs. The PGA of America made the curious decision to declare that there would be no preferred lies on the eve of the championship even as mowers were simultaneously pushing waves of water down the highest point on the “outstanding” playing surface of 16th fairway. Not 18 hours later, Scheffler and Schauffele launched mudballs into the water from that same spot after perfect drives on 16 and each had a lot of reasonable complaints on behalf of the field about the issue. “It’s kind of stupid,” said Schauffele. Counterpoint: Pádraig Harrington says dealing with mud on the ball is part of the skill required in the game. Deal with it.
BOGEY: PGA of America leaders. Espousing its “obligation” to fiercely defend its club professional constituents, PGA president Don Rea and CEO Derek Sprague continued to vigorously oppose the ball rollback to be implemented in 2030 by the USGA and R&A. But when it came to discussing the tariffs that are deeply affecting the health and well-being of its members in the golf business right now, they didn’t stand up in defense. Said Sprague: “I’d say we have no official stance on tariffs.” And Rea: “A lot of our golf professionals own shops, but we don’t get into legislation. We just pivot and make the best of it.”
BIRDIE: Wild kingdom. At various points during the week, players were forced to pause because of turtles, ducks and snakes who make their home at Quail Hollow and went about their business on the fairways and greens. You never see that kind of stuff at Augusta National.
PAR: Architecture snobs. Sure, Quail Hollow isn’t Oakmont or Merion or some other blue-blooded architectural gem, but the criticism it takes seems a little out of bounds. “I guess I would say Quail Hollow is like a Kardashian,” former tour player Hunter Mahan said. “It’s very modern, beautiful and well kept, but it lacks a soul or character.” Mahan sought out club chairman Johnny Harris and apologized.
BIRDIE: Burgers. All food and non-alcoholic beverages in the on-course markets were included in the steep price ($380) of admission. So cheeseburgers worth paying for were “free” for everyone on site. It was convenient if not exactly a bargain like the Masters.
DNP: Dustin Johnson. After getting an invite based entirely on name reputation, DJ should have worn a Corebridge Financial Team logo instead of his 4Aces brand because he could be found at the bottom of the board with all the overmatched club pros. There’s a very real possibility we’ll never see DJ in the PGA again and once his U.S. Open exemption runs out after 2026 he might only be at the Masters.
QUAD: Phil Mickelson. A savant with a wedge in his hand, the left-hander melted down in the greenside bunker on the 12th hole Friday, leaving three whacks inside the trap before blasting it 60 feet past the flag and over the green en route to a snowman and an early departure.