The 2025 PGA TOUR Season by Winning Formula

One tournament tells you how one man won one week. Forty of them, laid side by side with the same four numbers each, start to tell you something about how golf tournaments were won in 2025. This page is the ledger for that season: every winner in our database with a strokes-gained record, the four category totals and their share of his advantage, the winning-formula label, and the season's averages. Each event name links to its own article.

Two cautions before the table, because a page like this invites overreading. First, 40 is a small number. Averages built from 40 winners move by a point or two whenever one lopsided week is added, so the percentages below are a description of 2025, not a law of golf. Second, the shares describe how each winner's advantage was distributed. They do not say which category "wins" tournaments, and a page of them cannot say what will happen next season. The method, definitions and limits are set out in how Data Action Golf reads a winner.

Every 2025 winner with a strokes-gained record

Strokes gained are Data Golf's, summed over the winner's four rounds against the field's average. The percentage after each figure is that category's share of the winner's advantage, counting only the categories where he beat the field. Events in Data Golf's PGA TOUR schedule without a strokes-gained record (the Puerto Rico Open, the Corales Puntacana Championship, the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, the Barracuda Championship, the Baycurrent Classic, the World Wide Technology Championship, the Butterfield Bermuda Championship and PGA TOUR Q-School) are not in the table and have no article.

The season in four numbers

Average winning margin: 1.9 strokes. Average bogeys per winner over 72 holes: 6.2. Eleven of the 40 wins came in a playoff, and 21 of the 40 winners led or shared the lead after 54 holes.

The two big categories were, as they usually are in strokes-gained analysis, approach play and putting. The average 2025 winner drew 35% of his advantage from each, with the tee shot at 16% and around the green at 14%. Approach was the largest single category for 18 of the 40 winners and putting for 17, with off the tee (3) and around the green (2) picking up the rest. That split is a fair summary of the year: about as many wins were led by the irons as by the putter, and very few by either end of the bag.

The averages hide the range, which is where the interest is. The largest approach week by a winner was Scottie Scheffler's +12.81 at The CJ Cup Byron Nelson; the smallest, still positive, was Chris Gotterup's +0.73 at the Genesis Scottish Open. The largest putting week was J.J. Spaun's +10.52 at the U.S. Open, where the winning score was 1 under par and he made 14 bogeys, the most by any winner all year; the only winner to lose strokes putting was Rory McIlroy at the Masters, at -1.25. Off the tee ran from Michael Brennan's +7.59 at the Bank of Utah Championship to Brian Campbell's -3.98 at the John Deere Classic, a spread of more than eleven strokes between two men who both won.

Fourteen of the 40 winners lost strokes to the field in at least one category. You do not need all four. You need enough of the right ones, and the table shows how many different ways "enough" was assembled.

The winning-formula ledger

Putting-Fueled Win (a putting share of 40% or more) was the most common label, at 13 of 40. Ball-Striking Blueprint (tee shot plus approach at 55% or more, approach the larger) was next at 11. Between them, those two labels cover 24 of the season's 40 analysed wins, which is another way of saying that most 2025 winners were carried either by the greens or by the long game, and rarely by both in equal measure: only one win, Steven Fisk's at the Sanderson Farms Championship, met the Complete-Game Victory rule of every category between 8% and 42%.

The labels are assigned by fixed rules checked in order, and the order matters. A Final-Round Takeover (three or more back, or outside the top five, after 54 holes) is checked before any share rule because the comeback is the story of that week, so Rory McIlroy's Players Championship, with a 51% approach share, is filed as a Takeover rather than a Blueprint. A Mistake-Free Win (no double bogey or worse, four or fewer bogeys) is checked next, which is why Scheffler's CJ Cup, with a 53% approach share and an 8-stroke margin, carries the scorecard label. Read the labels as a shorthand for the table, not a ranking of skills.

Scottie Scheffler's six

Six of the 40 wins belonged to Scottie Scheffler, and they are a useful illustration of why one label per winner would be a mistake. His six carry four different labels: Mistake-Free Win at The CJ Cup Byron Nelson, Ball-Striking Blueprint at the PGA Championship, the Memorial Tournament and the Procore Championship, Putting-Fueled Win at The Open Championship, and Final-Round Takeover at the BMW Championship. His approach share ran from 30% at the PGA Championship to 54% at The Open and the Procore, and his putting share from 0% at the Memorial, where he lost 0.06 of a stroke to the field on the greens and won by 4 anyway, to 45% at The Open. The same player, in the same season, won with the irons, with the putter, with the scorecard and from behind. Six wins is still six data points, but it is a fair warning against assuming that a great player has one formula.

Rory McIlroy's three (Driving Domination at Pebble Beach, Final-Round Takeover at The Players, Ball-Striking Blueprint at the Masters) make the same point with a smaller sample.

What this ledger can and cannot say

It can say how 40 wins were distributed across the four categories in 2025, which labels recurred, and how wide the range was. It can say that a winner losing strokes in a category was common (14 of 40) and that a winner losing strokes putting was rare (1 of 40). It can give you a yardstick for reading any single week: a 62% approach share is a lot because the season average was 35%.

It cannot say why any of these players won, because a share is an attribution, not a cause, and with 11 playoffs and an average margin under two strokes, most of these weeks turned on a handful of shots in every category. It cannot rank courses or predict next year. It cannot see wind, pins, or nerves. And it cannot see the events without a strokes-gained record, so it is a ledger of the measured season, not the whole one.

Better data always means better golf, and a season of it is the best yardstick we have for the next single week.