The 8 hottest moments from the 2025 pro golf season

While the 2025 golf season had many highlights (Rory McIlroy’s career Grand Slam, Scottie Scheffler’s two major triumphs), it was far from a controversy-free start.

The year featured many low moments, in which the pressure of professional golf turned into heated confrontations between players, fans, cameramen and, in one case, history lockers.

So before we head into the new year, we’ve compiled a list of the nine hottest moments in golf this year.

Bryson DeChambeau, Justin Rose and the caddies get into it at the Ryder Cup

Surprisingly, the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black appears many times on this list. But this first case is the only one involving a fight between players and players, rather than fans and players.

A Saturday foursome between Americans Bryson DeChambeau and Scottie Scheffler and Europeans Justin Rose and Tommy Fleetwood turned ugly when it reached its climax.

In the midst of a tense, back-and-forth match, Rose pushed DeChambeau’s caddy, Greg Bodine, out of the way as Rose waited to hit the 15th green. The dust settled as the players made their way to the 16th seed.

DeChambeau was tweeting at Fleetwood and Scheffler’s caddy, Ted Scott, was in a tense conversation with European vice-captain Edoardo Molinari.

As Jaws continued at 16, Smylie Kaufman said this on the telecast: “No exaggeration guys – every single person in this T-shirt is hot.”

The fight eventually broke up when Scott and Molinari released a joint video the next morning laying out the beef.

Wyndham Clark breaks lockers at Oakmont (and drops club to sign on PGA)

The second “hottest” moment on our list wasn’t a dispute between two players, but between a former major league champion and a series of lockers.

Wyndham Clark, 2023 US Open champion, fired in anger at Oakmont’s Historic Dressing Roomdamaging a few cabinets in the process. When a photo of the injury emerged, Clark was suspended from the club. it later apologized.

But it wasn’t the first time that 2025 Clark took out his anger on an inanimate object at a Tour event.

At the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow, Clark hit his driver into a mark on the 16th tee, severely damaging it. He also apologized for this.

Rory McIlroy takes heckler’s phone call at The Players Championship

Rory’s first appearance on the list comes from the Players Championship in March. During a practice round Tuesday, a University of Texas junior attacked McIlroy after he hit a drive into a water hazard.

The problem was said to be related to McIlroy’s collapse at the 2011 Masters. Rory’s reaction was out of character. He faced the devil and his teammate, then he caught it A their mobile phones and left with it.

Rory didn’t face any consequences, though the boy was expelled and later punished by his school. McIlroy won the Masters a month later to silence the hecklers forever.

Shane Lowry tries out with the TV cameraman at the PGA Championship

The next three incidents occurred at the 2025 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.

In the first, Shane Lowry ran into an ESPN cameraman at a crucial moment. On the verge of missing the cut in Friday’s second round, Lowry got a terrible break when his putt landed in another player’s divot.

Lowry called an official to help with the decision, but when he did, a television cameraman approached Lowry and told him that his ball was not in his spot on the court, which would have allowed Lowry to take a free shot.

Lowry didn’t like that. it faced the cameraman in the moment and continued after his round.

“I was just asking the umpire, and the ESPN guy comes right over and he says, ‘That’s not your pitch.’ And I say, ‘It’s not for you to talk.’ he was asked to be and that’s what upset me the most.”

Brooks Koepka challenges heckler to fight at PGA

Our second hot moment from this year’s PGA involved four-time major winner Brooks Koepka and an embarrassing fan.

On Friday, and with Koepka struggling on the course, a fan decided to mock Koepka for his decision to join LIV. Koepka’s caddy reacted first, before Koepka took over the faceoff.

He pointed at the fan and yelled, “You wanna come down here and say it? You wanna come down here and say it? Tough guy now, huh?”

Fortunately, the situation did not escalate further.

Mud balls in Quail Hollow draw the ire of Scottie Scheffler

At this year’s PGA Championship, the mud caused much anxiety among the the players in the field. The rains left the roads in Quail Hollow soft. The result was that many players got stuck with the dreaded balls of mud.

In a normal PGA Tour event, the organizers might have adopted a preferred lie rule, allowing players to lift, clean and place their balls in the fairway. But because it was a major, PGA officials declined to do so.

The frequent balls of mud caused a number of unpredictable squirrel shots. Many complaints from the pros followed, most notably from world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who spoke at length about the issue after the second round.

“I understand how a golf purist would be, ‘Oh, play like you lie.’ But I don’t think they understand what it’s like to work literally your whole life to learn how to hit a golf ball and control it and hit shots and control distance and all of a sudden, because of a rules decision, (all of that) is completely taken away from us by chance.

“In golf, there’s enough luck in a 72-hole tournament that I don’t think the story should be whether or not the ball goes up or down. When I look at golf tournaments, I want the purest, fairest test of golf, and in my opinion maybe the ball today should have been played. But like I said, I don’t make the rules. I make the rules.”

By the end of the week, Scheffler was hoisting the Wanamaker Trophy as PGA champion.

Bryson DeChambeau promises to tweet Rory McIlroy, Rory responds

The 2025 Ryder Cup was lit long before the first shots were fired at Bethpage Black. In the lead, rivals Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy had a back-and-forth through the media.

At the premiere of “Happy Gilmore 2” in New York, DeChambeau fired the first volley, saying, “I’m going to tweet in (McIlroy’s) ear this time (at the Ryder Cup). Now, if we’re going to play against each other, I mean, you can be sure of that.”

McIlroy he answered IN The Guardiansaying, “I think the only way he gets attention is by mentioning other people. That’s basically what I think about it. To get attention he’ll mention me or Scottie (Scheffler) or others.”

McIlroy, of course, had the last laugh (again) when the Europeans convincingly defeated the American team in the Ryder Cup. But Rory couldn’t let it go. During the festivities at Bethpage, McIlroy was spotted covering DeChambeau’s name on a placard with a European flag.

Bethpage fans boo Rory McIlroy as Ryder Cup goes off the rails

Forget the dominance of the Europeans during the first two days at Bethpage Black. The same goes for the Americans’ heroic comeback on Sunday, which came too soon. The biggest story of the 2025 Ryder Cup, and perhaps the entire year in golf, was that the brutal harassment of Rory McIlroy and his fellow Europeans by fans.

On too many occasions to confess, fans crossed every imaginable boundary with inappropriate comments hurled at McIlroy and his family during the three-day event.

A frustrated McIlroy responded in kind with his rant directed at fans and caught on live TV. In one of the most unfortunate moments, one the emcee joined in with a profanity-laced song and was fired.

All this ruined the event forever and caused a chorus of criticism from around the golf world. In their victory press conference, McIlroy and the European team further detailed the “strange” abuse they faced from fans.