Future Major Projections – 2025

For the Projections made heading into 2024, see here. Date of Projection: 2/13/2025.

The model for projecting career majors for elite professional golfers has been simplified. While historic skill level and specific performance at majors was previously calculated using a pain-staking process, the new method is looking instead at historic pre-major betting odds and using that as the proxy for how likely a player was to win a major. Then, instead of building a “player age skill curve (PASC),” the age distribution of major winners since WWII was used. From here, a player’s recent trends and his career overall is factored in using multiples until we finally arrive at a career projection. Not only is this process easier to arrive at, it is also more objective than the prior one. Additionally, it ties to the (linked above) pre-major betting odds page, creating a symmetry within our databank of calculation/forecast systems. We let the market decide player value, the actual results of majors dictate the age curve, and then choose reasonable multiples to help smooth the data and hopefully arrive at solid estimates for golfers’ careers. Age refers to what the golfer will turn during calendar year 2025. The Projected Majors category refers to future majors. To calculate career estimated majors, add the player’s actual major total going into 2025.

Golfer	Age	Projected Majors
Scottie Scheffler	29	5.32
Tom Kim	23	2.53
Ludvig Aberg	26	2.09
Collin Morikawa	28	2.04
Jon Rahm	31	1.98
Xander Schauffele	32	1.67
Viktor Hovland	28	1.62
Rory McIlroy	36	1.39
Akshay Bhatia	23	1.21
Joaquin Niemann	27	1.10
Nick Dunlap	22	0.98
Bryson DeChambeau	32	0.90
Sungjae Im	27	0.89
Justin Thomas	32	0.84
Jordan Spieth	32	0.83
Cameron Young	28	0.75
Sam Burns	29	0.66
Luke Clanton	22	0.65
Hideki Matsuyama	33	0.64
Rasmus Hojgaard	24	0.63
Brooks Koepka	35	0.62
Sahith Theegala	28	0.62
Matt Fitzpatrick	31	0.61
Patrick Cantlay	33	0.59
Cameron Smith	32	0.59
Nicolai Hojgaard	24	0.58
Min Woo Lee	27	0.54
Will Zalatoris	29	0.47
Tommy Fleetwood	34	0.43
Tyrrell Hatton	34	0.41
Si Woo Kim	30	0.35
Wyndham Clark	32	0.34
Robert MacIntyre	29	0.32
Tony Finau	36	0.30
Davis Thompson	26	0.30
Tom McKibbin	23	0.23
Max Homa	35	0.23
Corey Conners	33	0.21
Shane Lowry	38	0.21
Sepp Straka	32	0.20
Aaron Rai	30	0.18
Jason Day	38	0.18
Rickie Fowler	37	0.16
Dustin Johnson	41	0.15
Russell Henley	36	0.15
Austin Eckroat	26	0.14
Christiaan Bezuidenhout	31	0.14
Byeong Hun An	34	0.13
Kurt Kitayama	32	0.11
Patrick Reed	35	0.11
Denny McCarthy	32	0.10
Maverick McNealy	30	0.10
J.T. Poston	32	0.09
Brian Harman	38	0.09
Thomas Detry	32	0.09
Thriston Lawrence	29	0.08
Jose Luis Ballester	22	0.08
Harris English	36	0.08
Daniel Berger	32	0.08
Keegan Bradley	39	0.07
Cam Davis	30	0.07
Keita Nakajima	25	0.07
Billy Horschel	39	0.06
Adam Scott	45	0.06
Dean Burmester	36	0.06
Taylor Moore	32	0.06
Taylor Pendrith	34	0.05
Justin Rose	45	0.05
Adrian Meronk	32	0.05
Talor Gooch	34	0.05
Tom Hoge	36	0.05
Matt McCarty	28	0.05
Matthieu Pavon	33	0.04
Davis Riley	29	0.04
Alex Noren	43	0.04
Chris Kirk	40	0.04
Ryan Fox	38	0.04
Stephan Jaeger	36	0.03
Emiliano Grillo	33	0.03
Guido Migliozzi	28	0.03
Tiger Woods	50	0.03
Sergio Garcia	45	0.03
Louis Oosthuizen	43	0.03
Romain Langasque	30	0.03
Matthew Jordan	29	0.03
Gary Woodland	41	0.03
Jake Knapp	31	0.03
Nick Taylor	37	0.03
Nico Echavarria	31	0.03
Kevin Yu	27	0.02
Jordan Smith	33	0.02
Adam Schenk	33	0.02
Justin Hastings	22	0.02
Thorbjorn Olesen	36	0.02
Dan Bradbury	26	0.02
Adam Hadwin	38	0.02
Lee Hodges	30	0.02
Max Greyserman	30	0.02
Rikuya Hoshino	29	0.02
Matt Wallace	35	0.02
Eric Cole	37	0.02
Erik van Rooyen	35	0.02
Ryggs Johnston	25	0.01
Matteo Manassero	32	0.01
Harry Hall	28	0.01
Jacob Skov Olesen	26	0.01
Angel Hidalgo	27	0.01
Jesper Svensson	29	0.01
Danny Willett	38	0.01
Marc Leishman	42	0.01
Jhonattan Vegas	41	0.01
Phil Mickelson	55	0.01
Sebastian Soderberg	35	0.01
Laurie Canter	36	0.01
Daniel Brown	31	0.01
Patton Kizzire	39	0.01
Martin Kaymer	41	0.01
Lucas Glover	46	0.01
Francesco Molinari	43	0.01
Frederic Lacroix	30	0.01
Antoine Rozner	32	0.01
Charl Schwartzel	41	0.01
Richard Bland	52	0.01
Shugo Imahira	33	0.01
Rafael Campos	37	0.00
Zach Johnson	49	0.00
Bubba Watson	47	0.00
Henrik Stenson	49	0.00
Jorge Campillo	39	0.00
Niklas Norgaard	33	0.00
Curtis Luck	29	0.00
Paul Waring	40	0.00
Padraig Harrington	54	0.00
Julien Guerrier	40	0.00
Jason Dufner	48	0.00
Jimmy Walker	46	0.00
Stewart Cink	52	0.00

We’ve included 137 golfers who are currently have listed betting odds in one or more major championship for 2025. There are others who weren’t included, though they are either non-competitive legacy winners or amateurs who qualified and don’t have much chance either.

The process for creating projections was multi-layered, but as noted earlier much more simple than the earlier iteration. A player’s forecasted future majors is predicated on his age and historic betting odds in the majors…that’s it. In one sense this forecast is less a projection of future majors and more a projection of how many majors the betting markets will think a player will win.

The toughest thing to account for in this model is whether or not a player will sustain elite play. Right now Scottie Scheffler has been clearly the world’s best golfer, and his major projections over the past three seasons have reflected that. As a golfer who will turn 29 in 2025, he is also in the prime years of a professional golfer’s career. This combination is what produces such a high projection. The model weights recent seasons heavily, and it is tough to forecast how likely it is that Scheffler sees a decline ala Jordan Spieth…a golfer who peaked in his 20’s.

Another difficulty is forecasting major qualification for LIV golfers. While it is built into the data to a degree, young talented golfers like David Puig and Joaquin Niemann will have a much better chance of winning majors if they can get into them. Niemann did well in LIV’s off-season and got into 3/4 majors in 2024. If he can continue to get into a majority of majors, his current estimate will be a lot more accurate than if he starts missing a lot of majors due to his league not having a direct path to the grand slam events.

Ultimately, it is the Scottie-era if he can maintain elite play. He’s projected to win 5.32 additional majors, which if he could get 5 more would get him to 7 for a career. This tie Arnold Palmer and cement him as one of the game’s greats. Others projected to win multiple majors moving forward include Tom Kim, Ludvig Aberg, and Collin Morikawa. Being young helps.

For 2025 itself, here is what the market is projecting in terms of total majors won (top 25 players only):

Golfer	Expected 2025 Majors Won
Scottie Scheffler	0.48
Rory McIlroy	0.28
Xander Schauffele	0.22
Jon Rahm	0.17
Ludvig Aberg	0.16
Bryson DeChambeau	0.14
Collin Morikawa	0.14
Brooks Koepka	0.11
Viktor Hovland	0.11
Justin Thomas	0.10
Hideki Matsuyama	0.10
Patrick Cantlay	0.08
Tyrrell Hatton	0.07
Tommy Fleetwood	0.07
Cameron Smith	0.07
Jordan Spieth	0.07
Joaquin Niemann	0.06
Tony Finau	0.06
Sahith Theegala	0.05
Tom Kim	0.05
Sam Burns	0.05
Shane Lowry	0.05
Matt Fitzpatrick	0.05
Wyndham Clark	0.05
Will Zalatoris	0.05

Note that this top 25 only accounts for 2.85 expected majors, so we’d expect one of the four to be won by someone not on this list. However, each major last season was won by a golfer in the top 10 in betting odds going in (Scheffler #1 – Masters, Schauffele T3 – PGA, DeChambeau T5 – U.S. Open, Schauffele #3 – British). We will also keep an updated market projection for the next major at our Current Championship Odds page.