It was quite the week in Ponte Vedra Beach at the Players Championship. All seven of our selections made the cut and five of them cashed a top-20 finish for us. Most notably, J.J. Spaun nearly pulled off the huge win….It is now off to Palm Harbor we go as the final stop on the Florida Swing has arrived.

It was quite the week in Ponte Vedra Beach at the Players Championship. All seven of our selections made the cut and five of them cashed a top-20 finish for us. Most notably, J.J. Spaun nearly pulled off the huge win….It is now off to Palm Harbor we go as the final stop on the Florida Swing has arrived.

Often heralded as golf’s “fifth major,” I prefer these days, sans LIV players in the field, to tab the Players Championship as golf’s greatest appetizer. This Thursday marks exactly four weeks until the opening round of the Masters, making the Players, the PGA Tour’s crown jewel, the undisputed world’s best precursor.

This week’s field is made up of 72 players. There will be a 36-hole cut, trimming down to the top 50 players and ties. Bay Hill is a big-boy golf course, for sure. A par 72 originally designed by Dick Wilson and Joe Lee, Arnold Palmer purchased the property in 1976 and began putting his hands on the tweaks and redesigns for the next four decades. Today’s version stretches to nearly 7,500 yards and is wall-to-wall Bermudagrass. The greens are relatively large, firm, and fast, and are some of the more difficult surfaces on Tour to reach in regulation. Much of that may have to do with the thick, penal rough that borders the fairways.

Forty-five days and six golf tournaments remain on the PGA Tour schedule before they put the first peg in the ground at Augusta National Golf Club for the 2025 Masters. The Florida Swing begins this week at the Champion Course at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. for the Cognizant Classic as the march toward the season’s first major championship is officially underway. In shifting from the west coast to the southeast, we go from Poa Annua greens, mountains, elevation change, and the Pacific Ocean to flatlands, palm trees, sand bunkers, Bermudagrass, and often, those infamous Florida winds. Welcome to the next four weeks on Tour in the Sunshine State.

It seems appropriate to call this one-week stop in Mexico “The Bridge.” The Ameca Bridge is the longest golf cart suspension bridge in the world, and it connects this week’s venue, Vidanta Vallarta, to the Nayar Golf Course in the Nueva Vallarta area, transporting golfers between courses, high above the Ameca River. This week’s Mexico Open at VidantaWorld also acts as a bridge between the West Coast Swing, having just ended with the Genesis Invitational, and the Florida Swing, beginning next week with the Cognizant Classic in Palm Beach Gardens.

This is normally where we land in the cleanup hitter’s spot in the lineup, closing out the end of a four-week run on the West Coast Swing, and one of my favorite superfectas in all of golf. From Torrey Pines to Pebble Beach, to Phoenix, and then to the one and only Riviera Country Club, it is quite the quadruple play in golf.

Tiger’s team beats Rory’s team in overtime last Monday night in the TGL. Rory wins at Pebble Beach on Sunday in his 2025 PGA Tour debut. Now WM Phoenix Open week is here, taking up its usual spot as the pre-party for the Big Game on Super Sunday. February is off to a great start.

From high atop the cliffs overlooking La Jolla shores, we travel up the coast to Carmel, California for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. This will be the second Signature Event of the 2025 season and the second straight week in which the players face Poa Annua grass greens.

The pre-season is over and it’s now time for big-boy golf on the PGA Tour beginning this Wednesday in gorgeous La Jolla, California.

For many years in handicapping and betting on golf, I have used the first few weeks of the season to get a feel for things: who is playing well, who is not, as a way to ease into the swing of things, just as one might with the pre-season in other sports.

After making its traditional two-week start on the Hawaiian Islands, the 2025 PGA Tour season shifts back to the mainland for the beginning of the West Coast Swing. First stop: La Quinta, Calif., for the American Express.

The American Express is played over three different golf courses: the Nicklaus Tournament Course at PGA West, La Quinta Country Club, and the Stadium Course at PGA West. Each player will play one round at each of the three courses before a 54-hole cut is made. Sunday’s final round is held on the Stadium Course. Nick Dunlap is your defending champion, winning last year as an amateur, the first player to do so on Tour in 33 years.

Not a bad way to kick off the 2025 golf season with a winner on Hideki Matsuyama (22-1) and his triumph at the Sentry in gorgeous Kapalua, Maui. It’s funny — we finished the FedEx Fall with three straight runner-up finishes and then closed out 2024 with a winner on Scottie Scheffler at the Hero World Challenge back in December. Will a third outright winner in a row emerge for us this week at the Sony Open? We’ll see. Fingers crossed.

It is always such a welcome sight though as we make our way through a cold, winter season, feasting our eyes on those emerald-green fairways, clear-blue skies, and Pacific Ocean views featured this week in Northwest Maui. If the Masters is our way of ushering in the spring season, Kapalua is certainly a gorgeous indicator of another golf season beginning.

We wrap up our 2024 PGA Tour coverage here in this column this week with the Hero World Challenge, taking place at Albany Golf Club in the Bahamas… It is a loaded field with all participants ranking inside the top 40 in the OWGR. Scheffler is back to defend his title and he’ll be joined by Ludvig Aberg, Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Wyndham Clark, Sam Burns and Sahith Theegala, among others. Unfortunately, this week’s tournament host, Tiger Woods, will not be in the field due to injury.

From Chiba, Japan, to Los Cabos, Mexico, to Southampton, Bermuda, the PGA Tour hasn’t set foot in the mainland since leaving Las Vegas nearly a month ago.

If you have been globetrotting along with the Tour lately, it will make for over 10,000 miles traveled when the players touch down in St. Simons Island, Georgia next week for the final stop of the FedEx Cup Fall at the RSM Classic.

From Chiba, Japan, to Los Cabos, Mexico, to Southampton, Bermuda, the PGA Tour hasn’t set foot in the mainland since leaving Las Vegas nearly a month ago.

If you have been globetrotting along with the Tour lately, it will make for over 10,000 miles traveled when the players touch down in St. Simons Island, Georgia next week for the final stop of the FedEx Cup Fall at the RSM Classic.

The FedEx Cup Fall is back and it continues on international soil for another week. Prior to taking a week off last week, the Tour was in Japan for the Zozo Championship and now it is in Los Cabos, Mexico, for the World Wide Technology Championship at El Cardonal at Diamante. Only three events remain on the schedule for the fall season. At the conclusion of this fall swing, players must rank in the top 125 in FedEx Cup points in order to retain their Tour card for the 2025 season.

The FedEx Cup Fall shifts from the United States to Japan this week for the Zozo Championship at Narashino Country Club in Chiba, Japan. This will be the sixth edition of the Zozo and the fifth time it has been held at Narashino. The list of past winners is star-studded and the field this week is the best we have seen so far this fall. Collin Morikawa is back to defend his 2023 title.

We are entering the halfway point of the FedEx Cup Fall as the Tour makes the short trip from Ivins, Utah, down to Las Vegas this week for the Shriners Children’s Open, in what will be the fourth of the eight fall series events.

After a quick break, the PGA Tour resumes this week, kicking off its The PGA Tour returns to the state of Utah for a full-field championship for the first time since 1963. The Black Desert Championship at the Black Desert Resort in Ivins, Utah, is making its debut on Tour and its first of four scheduled annual appearances during the FedEx Cup Fall swing.