With football heading into the playoffs, college basketball beginning conference play and the NBA still weeks away from the All-Star break, the sports world is turning its attention to the 2026 PGA Tour season, which begins Thursday at the Sony Open in Hawaii. There’s a lot to see in this week’s tournament, but we need to take a closer look at the game as a whole before the campaign begins.
Will 2026 be dominated by Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, who looked like they were making weekly headlines in 2025? Scheffler may have gotten off to a slow start, but by the end of the year he had completed two more legs of the Career Grand Slam and was once again crowned PGA Tour of the Year. The opposite was true for McIlroy, who finally reached the top at Augusta National, winning his first Masters and completing the career Grand Slam he’d been chasing for more than a decade, but then faltered a bit before finding his game again.
Could this be a real breakout year for Tommy Fleetwood, who went from never winning a PGA Tour event to winning the Tour Championship and the huge paycheck that comes with it in the FedEx Cup Playoffs? Could Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, or Rickie Fowler really make a comeback and justify their popularity by stepping into the winner’s circle more than they have in recent years?
There are a lot of questions to answer as the season begins, and the experts at CBS Sports will do their best to explain the situation. Let’s take a look at the names that should thrive and survive.
2026 PGA Tour Predictions
player of the year
Scotty Scheffler: Yawn. “It’s boring!” Schaeffler plans to sprint towards 2026, hoping to make up for a slow start in 2025. He’s been hitting the gym with an emphasis on endurance, and he’s also been increasing his speed with a new TaylorMade driver in his bag. It’s an area he sees room for improvement, and if he sees improvement as quickly as his putter has become a weapon over the past two seasons, it’s one to watch. By the end of 2026, the world No. 1 will have 25 wins on the PGA Tour and be a member of five major championship clubs. — Patrick McDonald
Scotty Scheffler. A bold choice, right? It’s just hard to imagine a world where he can’t win five games, including a major (if health is a condition). For anyone else, it would be incredibly difficult to break through such a season. Scottie won the Player of the Year award three times and continues to work his way to the all-time list. — Robbie Calland
Most wins (excluding Schaeffler)
Xander Schauffele: Because as important as 2024 was to raising Schauffele’s stock, his 2025 was just as important in locking him into a blue-chip player. Although he was clearly affected by injuries for much of the year, he regained his form in the fall with strong performances in the Ryder Cup and a win at the Bay Current Classic in Japan. From tee to green, he remained a solid producer. He just needs to find his rhythm on the greens in 2026 to get closer to the 2024 version of himself. He has the longest cutting streak on the PGA Tour, with 14 top-20 finishes in the past 15 major championships. — McDonald’s
Tommy Fleetwood: This young man has finally made his breakthrough in the Tour Championship and could be on a tear in 2026. Tommy has won a major and several other wins this season and should significantly close the gap on world No. 2 Rory McIlroy by the end of the year. For a long time, Fleetwood appeared and fought, lost and then disappeared. Last year, he just kept knocking on the door and refused to back down even after falling one step short. He leaves in 2026. — Calland
Comeback Player of the Year
Jordan Spieth: The lesson of the 2025 season is that injuries take time to recover — including Scheffler, Schauffele, and even Spieth. After undergoing surgery on his wrist in the offseason, Spieth began to show legitimate signs that he was on his way back to being a top-20 player in the world in 2025. There’s a lot of talk about his iron play needing to improve (and it has), but the two things that stand out to me are his putting inside 10 feet (throws away the gamer) and his mentality (relaxation). Spieth has only two wins on the PGA Tour since winning the 2017 Open at Royal Birkdale, where players return this summer. He added to that this year. — McDonald’s
Brooks Koepka: I haven’t seen Brooks compete seriously in a while. His T12 at last year’s U.S. Open was his best major finish in two years. I don’t think the rhythm and feel of LIV Golf captured his competitive mindset and brought out the best in his game. Perhaps he’s just past his prime, but at 35 years old, I believe Koepka still has a lot of power, and returning to the PGA Tour schedule will help him find that level. — Calland
Breakout Player of the Year
Ryan Gerald: The 26-year-old has always had confidence and his game started to catch up midway through the 2025 season. Gerrard made a surprise appearance on the leaderboard at the PGA Championship before taking his first PGA Tour victory at the Barracuda Championship. He needed to finish fourth in the final event of the year on the DP World Tour to earn an invitation to the Masters, so he headed to Mauritius and, despite being eliminated in the playoffs, secured a place on the tee sheet at Augusta National in April. He remains consistent from tee to green and if he can find some comfort on the greens, Gerrard could easily become a top 20 player in the world. (Bonus: Keep an eye out for Tom McKibbin, a rising star from LIV Golf, at the 2026 Majors. The 23-year-old is very well-rounded at this stage of his career, improving in all aspects with each season.) — McDonald’s
Neil Shipley: He’s an up-and-down player, finishing in the top 10 eight times and winning two times on the Korn Ferry Tour last year, but missing out on 11 occasions, but when he’s on a roll he can compete with the absolute best. It doesn’t hurt that Shipley is already a well-known player with a big personality, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see him finish in the top 10 in the PGA Tour’s biggest events this season and win to solidify his status as a rising star. — Calland
Rock and win a major championship
Justin Rose: He’s already 120 years old, but I still believe he can win a major. This really should go to Schaeffler. Might go to McIlroy. But at the moment they are free spaces and you are looking for something a little more extra, so what about the 45-year-old British? We know what he can do at the Masters. He won his only major championship in Philadelphia, where the PGA Championship is held. He is a past US Open champion and I have no doubts about him at the US Open as well. — McDonald’s
Tommy Fleetwood: It doesn’t seem interesting to just put Scheffler in this space, but he’ll probably win again in 2026. The Fleetwood slot shows that I am fully committed to The Lad this year. What could go wrong? Most likely at the British Open, but he has the ability to compete in all four majors. Although he has always hit the ball, he is starting to show more confidence in his putter and now has the belief that he can finish the round strong instead of limping. — Calland
FedEx Cup Top 5 (start of playoffs)
(1) Scottie Schaeffler, (2) Xander Schauffele, (3) Justin Rose, (4) Hideki Matsuyama, (5) Matt McCarty: In addition to his high praise for Scheffler and Schauffele, Rose is also expected to win a major, so he’ll be in the mix here as well. Rounding out the top five are Matsuyama, who has quietly recorded double wins in three of the past four years, and McCarty, who is likely to raise some eyebrows. The left-hander will be seeing all of these golf courses for the second time in his sophomore campaign, which can only help. He is currently not participating in any major events, but the expectation is that he can play his way and potentially win a tournament or two. — McDonald’s
(1) Scottie Schaeffler, (2) Tommy Fleetwood, (3) Rory McIlroy, (4) Xander Schauffele, (5) Viktor Hovland: NWhile they won’t be able to take any serious steps here, expect a breakout year from the top stars, especially as Schauffele and Hovland are back to elite form, fighting more regularly than a year ago and scoring some strong results in big events.
surprising prediction
The PGA Tour plans to cancel the Presidents Cup. This is all gut feeling, but if I were PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolup and I was paying close attention to the Presidents Cup, I would wonder how viable the event would be in the long run without some of its big names and notables (Europeans). With the event scheduled until 2030 and falling short of the PGA of America’s Ryder Cup, Rolup may look in another direction: a team-style tournament. It is both too similar to its counterpart and at the same time much less convincing. Not a great combination. — McDonald’s
Scottie Scheffler never completed a Grand Slam in his career. Shinnecock is being looked at as Scheffler’s replacement, and it feels like it’s only a matter of time before he adds his name to golf’s most exclusive clubs, but that won’t happen until 2026. As we all saw with McIlroy, conquering history is not as easy as it seems. I don’t think Scottie will go through a 10-year drought like Lowry or be locked in a torture chamber like Phil Mickelson at the U.S. Open, but I do believe he’ll have to go through some heartache before winning the U.S. Open. His performances at the past two U.S. Opens (even with a T7 at Oakmont) weren’t the Scheffler we’re used to seeing. He’s still figuring out how to best approach his U.S. Open setup. — Calland
