With the 2026 PGA Tour season will launch in Hawaii At the end of this week, the marquee names and stories will dominate the upcoming exercises in all of professional golf.
But what do the numbers say about this year’s potential stars? And what statistics and trends point to potential comeback campaigns among veteran players? I’ve dug into some key metrics to identify strong candidates to fill these roles in 2026. Some names will be familiar, while others will fly under the radar – but only for a short while.
PIERCESON COODY
Pierceson Coody has spent his entire golf life walking under the long shadow of expectation; he is a third-generation tour pro and the grandson of the 1971 Masters winner Charles Coody. The 25-year-old Texas man has repeatedly met this moment by climbing to the top of the World ranking of amateur golfa national team championship in Texas and a trio of Korn Ferry Tour wins.
Now, the numbers point to a player ready to take the next step in his career. There are 135 players with enough rounds to officially qualify for PGA Tour statistics in the 2024 and ’25 seasons. Of that group, Coody made the biggest jump in strokes gained per round, increasing his average by 1.15 per round in ’25.
Coody led the tour in strokes gained off the tee and ranked fourth on the green in putting percentage a season ago. From the 3M Open through the end of the season, Coody ranked T2 on Tour in GIR (77.8%), 4th in putts (+1.40) and 8th in scoring average.
Key stats to improve: placing from 15 to 20 feet. Coody ranked outside the top 150 in hitting percentage from that range in each of the last two seasons. Taking this number only up to tournament average would be consequential.
GARRICK HIGGO
You could give most golf fans 50 guesses as to who led the PGA Tour in birdie average last season, and they wouldn’t guess the right answer. There’s Higgo, who moved up from 159th in the strokes and winning Tour total in 2024 to 22nd last year. That jump of 137 points is easily the highest among qualifiers (second biggest jump: Alex Smalley, up 115 points).
Higgo’s win last April at Corales Puntacana was undoubtedly his highlight of the season, but the most promising part of his stat picture in 2025 was consistent play. After five top-10 finishes in 92 PGA Tour starts from 2021-24, Higgo matched that total in just 15 events last season. In 2024, Higgo ranked well outside the top 100 in scam avoidance. Last season, the only player with a lower layoff rate on Tour was Scottie Scheffler.
Key stats to improve: approximate proximity. Higgo was ranked 160th last year in average proximity from the rough (47′ 3″), more than two feet worse than the PGA Tour average. The good news is that he has plenty of physical talent to change that; Higgo is top 20 on tour in club head speed.
RICKIE FOWLER
Major League Baseball probably has the most prominent midseason break in American pro sports – before and after the All-Star Game is universally considered a key checkpoint in a marathon season. Player numbers are often referred to with that hyphen. For the PGA Tour, there are different ways to split it, but a general point “halfway” between Hawaii and East Lake it is the beginning of May.
In 2025, there were exactly 100 players last season who had 30 or more PGA Tour qualifying rounds on either side of that divide. Among the list of players who improved their performance the most in the second half compared to the first is Fowler, whose improvement of 1.45 total strokes gained per round is 7th best among that group.
Fowler finished the 2025 season with a flourish.
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Fowler jumped more than 100 spots from 2024 to 2025 in bogey avoidance (from 140th to 28th), and he finished the season with T6 and T7 finishes in his two FedExCup Playoff starts.
Key stats to improve: game approach. Fowler returned to the winner’s circle in 2023, a season in which he climbed into the top-10 on the PGA Tour by earned run. That number plummeted to 124th in 2024 before making a modest improvement last season. Fowler’s two strong playoff performances featured two of his best weeks of iron play of the year, a potential flash of what’s to come.
MICHAEL THORBJORNSEN
There are few batting talents with the great promise of the former Young American amateur champion Michael Thorbjornsen. In 2025, he accomplished the rare statistical double of leading the Tour in both overall and regulation. The list of other players to do it in the last 30 seasons is great: Hal Sutton in 1998, David Duval in 1999, Tiger Woods in 2000 and Henrik Stenson in 2015.
Big accomplishments quickly followed for each of those star players once they reached that hitting zenith. Sutton went on to win The Players in 2000. Duval broke through and won his title at The Open in 2001. Among some of the most dominant golf ever played, Woods completed the Tiger Slam in ’01. Stenson went on to defeat Phil Mickelson to win The Open in 2016.
This big step may be an unfair expectation for Thorbjornsen in 2025 – he has only played in one major championship as a professional – but it speaks to his immense potential. In his final start of the 2025 RSM Classic, Thorbjornsen entered the final round just two shots off the lead before finishing in a tie for 7th. The first PGA Tour win is coming soon.
Key stats to improve: strokes gained by putting. It’s a broad brush here, but Thorbjornsen ranked outside the top 100 on Tour in nearly every key metric a year ago. That includes all-time hits earned, where he was 120th. The only time Thorbjornsen finished a week in the top 20 of a Tour field in the shot put was at the 3M Open, where he finished T4.
Consider this: In the seven seasons in which the Korn Ferry Tour has awarded Rookie of the Year honors, two players have earned that distinction AND Player of the Year: Scottie Scheffler in 2018 and Johnny Keefer in 2025.
If you weren’t following the KFT last season, Keefer’s vault up the Official World Golf Rankings would surprise you. He ended the year in 48th position, just behind Wyndham Clark and Si Woo Kim. And, yes, that EOY top-50 finish earned Keefer an invitation to Augusta National this coming April.
Keefer displayed balanced brilliance from a statistical perspective on the Korn Ferry Tour last season: more than 320 yards off the tee, top 15 in greens in reg, second in scrimmage and 10th in average putting. He finished his year with a top-10 finish at the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic, as well.
Key stats to improve: The PGA Tour begins. It’s the simplest observation, but Keefer has yet to repeat on the world’s biggest professional circuit, having played in just six PGA Tour events. As hot as it has been over the last 18 months, the climb may slow down a bit in early 2026.
MAX HOMA
After finishing in the top 10 in nearly 30% of his PGA Tour starts from 2021 to 2023, Max Homa there are only five such finishes in the last two seasons. His stagnant career climb led to a change, which began to pay off when he shot a 64 in Round 2 of the PGA Championship. A more consistent game came later in the year; in his last eight starts of 2025, Homa averaged just 2.2 bogeys or worse per round and had a scoring average of 68.7.
Homa entered last summer’s 3M Open with a -0.65 stroke average, greens per round for the ’25 Tour season. From that point through the end of the year, that number was +0.66 per round. Homa has spent 67 weeks of his career in the top-10 of the Official World Golf Ranking. The numbers suggest he’s getting closer to that version of himself than what we’ve seen for most of the last 24 months.
Key stats to improve: poultry conversion rate. This is a number of two-tiered species: the enhanced gameplay of Homa’s approach will essentially result in more realistic looking birds. That will lead to a higher percentage of converted shots, a category in which he ranked 5th in 2023. The last two seasons, he ranks 86th and 71st, respectively. Homa was ranked in the top 10 on Tour in most overall ranking categories just three seasons ago, and there’s no reason to think he can’t rediscover that form soon.
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