Opinion & Analysis
PGA Tour Rookies 2015: Who can make the biggest splash?
The 2014 class of PGA Tour rookies were underwhelming to say the least. Chesson Hadley captured Rookie of the Year honors on the circuit, a distinction he achieved via a victory and four total top-10s.
Among the winners of the award since 2010, this campaign is easily the worst of the bunch. Jordan Spieth’s 2013 and Keegan Bradley’s 2011 speak for themselves. But despite zero wins in 2010, Rickie Fowler’s season was demonstrably better than Hadley’s 2014—courtesy of three top-threes and seven top-10s. John Huh’s 2012 mirrored the one-win, four top-10 showing of last year’s winner, but his 22-of-28 in made cuts far outpaces Hadley’s 13-of-29.
The rest of the rookie bunch in 2014 proved so thoroughly mediocre that the other two finalists (Brooks Koepka and Victor Dubuisson) were part-time PGA Tour players.
The 2014-2015 PGA Tour rookie class has the chance to cleanse the sins of its predecessor though. This group of maiden voyagers contains a boatload of high-potential performers in their initial Tour season.
Among the freshman pack, seven names in particular stick out. And we have predictions for all of them in 2015.
Yes, rookie seasons are technically underway, but the sample size is still quite small.
Much remains to be seen and here are our best guesses as to the progress of this most-talented set in the upcoming year.
Nick Taylor
Let’s start off with the only Tour rookie with a win in the wraparound portion of the 2014-2015 schedule.
Yes, Taylor secured a two-shot victory at the Sanderson Farms Championship in early November—a milestone win in a young career.
The 26-year-old’s name may be unfamiliar to most golf fans, but Taylor was once the World’s No. 1-ranked amateur. That was in 2009, only five years ago.
In the coming years, Taylor would try his hand on mini tours and the PGA Tour Canada circuit. In Canada he was fine, finishing in the top 30 on the money list each year from 2011-2013. Taylor was exempt on the Web.com Tour in 2014, and placed 69th on its money list. A trip to the Web.com Tour Finals got him his PGA Tour card.
A victory and former top-dog status seem to imply a prosperous beginning in the big leagues, especially with his high status on the PGA Tour tournament priority list (which means easy access to most events) via his spot in the winners’ category… except I’m more comfortable cooling off on the Taylor hype.
Even in his early seasons on far lesser circuits than the PGA Tour, his results weren’t overwhelming, and he didn’t tear it up on the Web.com Tour last season. The win this fall was nice and a legitimate great week of golf, but probably an outlier at this point. In four other PGA Tour events during the wraparound, Taylor made three cuts but never placed in the top 50.
With all of this, I feel Taylor will just fall into his fair share of valleys in the new calendar year. Taylor may be on his way to a lot of low finishes and missed cuts, but has the silver lining of one week of fantastic golf that sets his top-10 number at two. If it wasn’t for the victory, I would expect Taylor to struggle to keep his card.
Adam Hadwin
Another Canadian here, Hadwin’s name surfaced with an eye-opening T4 at the RBC Canadian Open in 2011, submerged with decent but non-promotion worthy play on the Web.com Tour and rocketed back up with a 2014 that placed him on top of the minor league circuit.
The 27-year-old won twice and top-tenned nine times on the Tour last year, a performance set that garnered him the top spot on the Web.com Tour’s final money list (regular season plus Finals events money). He’s claimed that maturity played a large role in his renaissance season, but such an intangible is notoriously difficult to evaluate.
Hadwin’s name fits in the neutral category—where the rookie season is neither an outright dud nor a star effort. His wraparound results resemble those of Taylor (minus the victory), which isn’t promising. But he was an excellent player on the Web.com Tour last year, something that Taylor can’t claim.
Hadwin is fully exempt, and I expect him to make more cuts than missed and dabble in top-10s and top-25s. Of this group, he may be the most innocuous in 2015.
Tony Finau
Despite Taylor’s victory, Finau was the PGA Tour’s rookie story of the fall.
I mean, it’s tough to match a former 17-year-old professional whose career went south before finally finding his groove with a terrific season seven years later. And the folklore of his prodigious length off the tee is acquiring a sizable audience of its own.
Finau’s hype has been warranted in a way with his fall start in the wraparound, a five-event opening that produced two top-10s and four top-25s. Of course the praise has also been overdone to a degree—these results are a nice small sample, but they don’t tell a long-term story yet (especially when you peer into the quality of the fields).
The results are unlikely to match the story then in 2015. Finau is first on the reshuffle (a ranking list of the Web.com Tour Finals graduates that determines the order the players are selected into fields), which bodes very well for his schedule. He also possesses a lot of power, game and confidence heading into the new year, and while those all should aid his progress in 2015, his golf is still somewhat raw and he’s still quite new to fighting high-level competition (last season was his maiden one on the Web.com Tour).
Finau’s off to an excellent start and his game shouldn’t drop too much, but I don’t expect him to approach the pace he set in the fall. His game won’t generally be this sharp, and the stiffer competition will further skew the results downward. There will be some good showings though, I believe at least one top-three, and combined with his results from the fall, it should make him a nominee for Rookie of the Year. Check out Brendan Steele’s and Chris Kirk’s numbers from their rookie 2011’s and that’s where I see Finau ending up (minus any wins).
The 25-year-old success story should be just fine in 2015, but it’ll be difficult to prolong the torrid stretch he produced in the fall.
Patrick Cantlay
This is stretching the definition of rookie in a conventional sense, but the PGA Tour still recognizes Cantlay as a newborn pup.
The UCLA man is indeed in his first season by Tour standards, but is by far the trickiest to project on this occasion.
For recollection, the former World No. 1 amateur came into professional life with plenty of hype in 2012, and played pretty well in making six cuts in seven PGA Tour events on sponsors exemptions.
But the following year on the Web.com Tour, Cantlay started struggling with a hairline fracture in his vertebrae in the summer and shut down his play completely in September in order to let the injury heal (it didn’t require surgery). And more or less, he has played very little since in battling this and a potentially separate back injury.
If completely healthy and in good standing to obtain a full-time slate of PGA Tour events, Cantlay would rocket near the top of the list here. His talent is that vast.
The 22-year-old played the final wraparound event of the fall, but we don’t know for sure that his injuries have disappeared or that they won’t recur again—let alone the rust factor. He’s also a lowly 45th on the reshuffle, making playing opportunities scarcer and subsequently more pressure packed.
He’ll likely play more than in the past two years (12.5 events per annum combined on the PGA and Web.com Tours), but all of the aforementioned issues prevent me from seeing much success for him as a rookie. I see another limited schedule where he can make cuts without too much issue, but top finishes will be be rare.
Unfortunately this will probably lead to Cantlay going to the Web.com Tour Finals to regain his PGA Tour card. The future beyond 2015 is still bright though.
Carlos Ortiz
He’s a hot name whose relationship with Lorena Ochoa seems to come up in every story—no matter how much he previously expounded upon it.
Save this minor inconvenience of the media glare, the last 12 months have been a stunning bunch from the Mexican-born Ortiz. In that span, he rocketed from a no-name to a Web.com Tour blitzer, capturing three victories and earning a battlefield promotion to the PGA Tour. The spotlight has been on him since.
Ortiz also nailed together a solid few results in his first events as a PGA Tour rookie: Four starts, four made cuts, two top-25s, one top-10.
But whatever his long-term future, I’m not too sanguine about his 2015.
If that sounds crazy, hear me out. Ortiz’ 2014 season, while highly impressive, is an anomaly in his so far young career. The young Mexican’s talent is no joke, but he hasn’t really had a way of putting it together in some time. His sophomore year at North Texas was a special season with three wins, a campaign he followed up with a less stellar junior year and an even drearier senior year where he wasn’t even the team’s best player!
Maybe he finally figured out how to administer his talent in 2014, you say? If so, it was sporadic. The PGA Tour fall seemed fine, and the February-May stretch with two wins and five top-10s on the Web.com Tour proved excellent. But then there was the June-September Web.com drought, where Ortiz sandwiched a win between seven missed cuts and two other non-top 25 showings.
Sporadic doesn’t work as well on the PGA Tour, especially if the moments of struggle occur early and often, which I believe they will for Ortiz in 2015. A series of harrowing results in those crucial first months of good PGA Tour fields can quickly destroy confidence. And at that point the damage to the mental game can be too strong for the talent to make much of a difference in the short term.
This I believe to be the difficult short term path for Ortiz. His schedule is set due to his fully exempt status, but his lack of consistency in using his talent will likely mean a lot more missed cuts and marginal performances than he wants. He’ll be back at Web.com Tour Finals next year, this time fighting to retain his card.
Blayne Barber
Barber has been no stranger to disqualification, but 2014 was (mostly) about his stellar golf game that netted him two victories and a top-10 showing on the Web.com Tour money list.
The Auburn grad proved his college All-American credentials with his master class in the minor leagues, and he’s started out his rookie year on the big Tour forcefully, with top-10s in his final two events of the fall.
Barber heads into 2015 eighth on the reshuffle list—not exactly Finau territory but in fine position to set up a healthy, full schedule if his results don’t tank in the opening months of the new year.
As for his taking advantage of this potentially packed slate, I’m pretty optimistic. He’s not a prodigal talent, but he’s also assimilated rapidly in Year One on the NGA and Web.com Tours. The hallmark of his game is his tee-to-green accuracy, a tribute that stands to prohibit the major valleys in play that a less refined rookie might find. And he’s accountable and mature, if that counts for anything.
He should make a substantial amount of his cuts and add a few more top-10s and a half-dozen or so top-25s before the year is out. I expect him to be a Rookie of the Year candidate, with his odds of actually winning not that high.
Justin Thomas
And finally, we have my pick for PGA Tour Rookie of the Year.
Surprising if you look at his physical characteristics: a non-descript PGA Tour profile photo and an average 5-foot, 10-inch 145-pound frame. Not surprising if you’ve actually followed his career.
The 21-year-old was one of the top amateurs in the country before college, and exceeded expectations at the University of Alabama. Thomas dominated his freshman season, winning four times and capturing honors as National Player of the Year (Nicklaus award). His sophomore campaign was a regression, but still sensational. And his year on the Web.com Tour was predictably brilliant, with a win, seven top-10s and a fifth-place finish on the regular season money list.
He’s the most talented American prospect since Jordan Spieth, and if Thomas were to look to Spieth’s rookie campaign (one-win, nine top-10s and 13 top-25s) as a template for his own maiden PGA Tour season, it wouldn’t be too aspirational.
Thomas’ game isn’t without its flaws—while he hits it long despite his physical build, he is quite inaccurate off the tee—but it is quite polished through years of competing and thriving against top competition.
And saying athletes are hard working at their sporting craft is clichéd, but the anecdote at the end here is ridiculous.
There’s the talent, the work ethic, the previous stellar results on all levels, I just don’t see a way that Thomas doesn’t come out firing as a rookie. I don’t anticipate his maiden season being as good as Spieth’s—maybe something a notch less—but it wouldn’t be shocking if he matched the Texan. And Thomas could easily win his first PGA Tour tournament.
At the very least, he will be the victor in the Rookie of the Year race.
As the editor-in-chief of this website and an observer of the GolfWRX forums and other online golf equipment discourse for over a decade, I’m pretty well attuned to the grunts and grumbles of a significant portion of the golf equipment purchasing spectrum. And before you accuse me of lording above all in some digital ivory tower, I’d like to offer that I worked at golf courses (public and private) for years prior to picking up my pen, so I’m well-versed in the non-degenerate golf equipment consumers out there. I touched (green)grass (retail)!
Complaints about the ills of and related to the OEMs usually follow some version of: Product cycles are too short for real innovation, tour equipment isn’t the same as retail (which is largely not true, by the way), too much is invested in marketing and not enough in R&D, top staffer X hasn’t even put the new driver in play, so it’s obviously not superior to the previous generation, prices are too high, and on and on.
Without digging into the merits of any of these claims, which I believe are mostly red herrings, I’d like to bring into view of our rangefinder what I believe to be the two primary difficulties golf equipment companies face.
One: As Terry Koehler, back when he was the CEO of Ben Hogan, told me at the time of the Ft Worth irons launch, if you can’t regularly hit the golf ball in a coin-sized area in the middle of the face, there’s not a ton that iron technology can do for you. Now, this is less true now with respect to irons than when he said it, and is less and less true by degrees as the clubs get larger (utilities, fairways, hybrids, drivers), but there remains a great deal of golf equipment truth in that statement. Think about it — which is to say, in TL;DR fashion, get lessons from a qualified instructor who will teach you about the fundamentals of repeatable impact and how the golf swing works, not just offer band-aid fixes. If you can’t repeatably deliver the golf club to the golf ball in something resembling the manner it was designed for, how can you expect to be getting the most out of the club — put another way, the maximum value from your investment?
Similarly, game improvement equipment can only improve your game if you game it. In other words, get fit for the clubs you ought to be playing rather than filling the bag with the ones you wish you could hit or used to be able to hit. Of course, don’t do this if you don’t care about performance and just want to hit a forged blade while playing off an 18 handicap. That’s absolutely fine. There were plenty of members in clubs back in the day playing Hogan Apex or Mizuno MP-32 irons who had no business doing so from a ballstriking standpoint, but they enjoyed their look, feel, and complementary qualities to their Gatsby hats and cashmere sweaters. Do what brings you a measure of joy in this maddening game.
Now, the second issue. This is not a plea for non-conforming equipment; rather, it is a statement of fact. USGA/R&A limits on every facet of golf equipment are detrimental to golf equipment manufacturers. Sure, you know this, but do you think about it as it applies to almost every element of equipment? A 500cc driver would be inherently more forgiving than a 460cc, as one with a COR measurement in excess of 0.83. 50-inch shafts. Box grooves. And on and on.
Would fewer regulations be objectively bad for the game? Would this erode its soul? Fortunately, that’s beside the point of this exercise, which is merely to point out the facts. The fact, in this case, is that equipment restrictions and regulations are the slaughterbench of an abundance of innovation in the golf equipment space. Is this for the best? Well, now I’ve asked the question twice and might as well give a partial response, I guess my answer to that would be, “It depends on what type of golf you’re playing and who you’re playing it with.”
For my part, I don’t mind embarrassing myself with vintage blades and persimmons chasing after the quasi-spiritual elevation of a well-struck shot, but that’s just me. Plenty of folks don’t give a damn if their grooves are conforming. Plenty of folks think the folks in Liberty Corner ought to add a prison to the museum for such offences. And those are just a few of the considerations for the amateur game — which doesn’t get inside the gallery ropes of the pro game…
Different strokes in the game of golf, in my humble opinion.
Anyway, I believe equipment company engineers are genuinely trying to build better equipment year over year. The marketing departments are trying to find ways to make this equipment appeal to the broadest segment of the golf market possible. All of this against (1) the backdrop of — at least for now — firm product cycles. And golfers who, with their ~15 average handicap (men), for the most part, are not striping the golf ball like Tiger in his prime and seem to have less and less time year over year to practice and improve. (2) Regulations that massively restrict what they’re able to do…
That’s the landscape as I see it and the real headwinds for golf equipment companies. No doubt, there’s more I haven’t considered, but I think the previous is a better — and better faith — point of departure when formulating any serious commentary on the golf equipment world than some of the more cynical and conspiratorial takes I hear.
Agree? Disagree? Think I’m worthy of an Adam Hadwin-esque security guard tackle? Let me know in the comments.
@golfoncbs The infamous Adam Hadwin tackle ? #golf #fyp #canada #pgatour #adamhadwin ? Ghibli-style nostalgic waltz – MaSssuguMusic
Episode #16 brings us Cliff McKinney. Cliff is the founder of Old Charlie Golf Club, a new club, and concept, to be built in the Florida panhandle. The model is quite interesting and aims to make great, private golf more affordable. We hope you enjoy the show!
Last week, I came across a reel from BBC Sport on Instagram featuring Scottie Scheffler speaking to the media ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush. In it, he shared that he often wonders what the point is of wanting to win tournaments so badly — especially when he knows, deep down, that it doesn’t lead to a truly fulfilling life.
View this post on Instagram
“Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it because I’ve literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport,” Scheffler said. “To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world, because what’s the point?”
Ironically — or perhaps perfectly — he went on to win the claret jug.
That question — what’s the point of winning? — cuts straight to the heart of the human journey.
As someone who’s spent over two decades in the trenches of professional golf, and in deep study of the mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the game, I see Scottie’s inner conflict as a sign of soul evolution in motion.
I came to golf late. I wasn’t a junior standout or college All-American. At 27, I left a steady corporate job to see if I could be on the PGA Tour starting as a 14-handicap, average-length hitter. Over the years, my journey has been defined less by trophies and more by the relentless effort to navigate the deeply inequitable and gated system of professional golf — an effort that ultimately turned inward and helped me evolve as both a golfer and a person.
One perspective that helped me make sense of this inner dissonance around competition and our culture’s tendency to overvalue winning is the idea of soul evolution.
The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has done extensive research on reincarnation, and Netflix’s Surviving Death (Episode 6) explores the topic, too. Whether you take it literally or metaphorically, the idea that we’re on a long arc of growth — from beginner to sage elder — offers a profound perspective.
If you accept the premise literally, then terms like “young soul” and “old soul” start to hold meaning. However, even if we set the word “soul” aside, it’s easy to see that different levels of life experience produce different worldviews.
Newer souls — or people in earlier stages of their development — may be curious and kind but still lack discernment or depth. There is a naivety, and they don’t yet question as deeply, tending to see things in black and white, partly because certainty feels safer than confronting the unknown.
As we gain more experience, we begin to experiment. We test limits. We chase extreme external goals — sometimes at the expense of health, relationships, or inner peace — still operating from hunger, ambition, and the fragility of the ego.
It’s a necessary stage, but often a turbulent and unfulfilling one.
David Duval fell off the map after reaching World No. 1. Bubba Watson had his own “Is this it?” moment with his caddie, Ted Scott, after winning the Masters.
In Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, reflecting on his 2011 Super Bowl win, Rodgers said:
“Now I’ve accomplished the only thing that I really, really wanted to do in my life. Now what? I was like, ‘Did I aim at the wrong thing? Did I spend too much time thinking about stuff that ultimately doesn’t give you true happiness?’”
Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
Eventually, though, something shifts.
We begin to see in shades of gray. Winning, dominating, accumulating—these pursuits lose their shine. The rewards feel more fleeting. Living in a constant state of fight-or-flight makes us feel alive, yes, but not happy and joyful.
Compassion begins to replace ambition. Love, presence, and gratitude become more fulfilling than status, profits, or trophies. We crave balance over burnout. Collaboration over competition. Meaning over metrics.
Interestingly, if we zoom out, we can apply this same model to nations and cultures. Countries, like people, have a collective “soul stage” made up of the individuals within them.
Take the United States, for example. I’d place it as a mid-level soul: highly competitive and deeply driven, but still learning emotional maturity. Still uncomfortable with nuance. Still believing that more is always better. Despite its global wins, the U.S. currently ranks just 23rd in happiness (as of 2025). You might liken it to a gifted teenager—bold, eager, and ambitious, but angsty and still figuring out how to live well and in balance. As much as a parent wants to protect their child, sometimes the child has to make their own mistakes to truly grow.
So when Scottie Scheffler wonders what the point of winning is, I don’t see someone losing strength.
I see someone evolving.
He’s beginning to look beyond the leaderboard. Beyond metrics of success that carry a lower vibration. And yet, in a poetic twist, Scheffler did go on to win The Open. But that only reinforces the point: even at the pinnacle, the question remains. And if more of us in the golf and sports world — and in U.S. culture at large — started asking similar questions, we might discover that the more meaningful trophy isn’t about accumulating or beating others at all costs.
It’s about awakening and evolving to something more than winning could ever promise.
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Golfraven
Jan 15, 2015 at 7:18 am
actually there is a video on pgatour.com covering all those rookies
Golfraven
Jan 13, 2015 at 2:45 pm
By just looking through the pictures I would choose Justin Thomas, he got that look of a winner – similar to Jordan Spieth. Will watch out for this guy that season
RAT
Jan 13, 2015 at 11:29 am
I really like the new front page set up!!