Dominant players, an ongoing stalemate, death, injury and an arrest – the past year in golf delivered a little bit of everything.

How to summarise world golf in 2024? In many ways it felt like the calm before the storm, although calling the current state of golf “calm” is inaccurate. So instead let’s label it as “nuanced”. How this past year unfolded depends on your point of view.

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Scottie Scheffler and Nelly Korda brought a dimension to professional golf not seen since Tiger Woods and Annika Sorenstam were dominating men’s and women’s golf 20-plus years ago. For anyone who grew tired of the dominance then, the ensuing two decades perhaps made us hungry for it again. To see two such confident, consummate professionals simultaneously at the top of their games had a refreshing quality to it.

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What sort of year did Scheffler author? He won six times, including a major, was arrested mid-major, became a father and saw off protesters on the 72nd green of a PGA Tour event. And that was just before the end of June…

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Karl Vilips is a true child prodigy. We should be reluctant to place undue burden on one so young, yet he shapes as Australia’s ‘Next Big Thing’. When you’ve been winning golf tournaments since primary-school age, it says a lot about an ability to handle pressure and people’s expectations.

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The joint Australian Open format was worth trying, but it’s simply not working. Why not try staging the men’s and women’s championships in consecutive weeks at the same venue?

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If you carve up Moore Park Golf, you carve up all public golf in Australia. This is a fight the game can’t afford to lose.

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The passing of Grayson Murray in May – a mere four months after his biggest victory – served as a stark reminder of an ever-present fragility, even at the top echelon. You just never know what’s truly going on in another person’s mind.

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Jeffrey Guan’s freak eye injury in September also reminds us that playing golf is not entirely danger-free.

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The Masters delivered once again, but not in the way you might think. Sure, Scheffler turned what looked like a Sunday shootout into a procession with a clinical final nine holes, but it was more the golf course and the weather that made the 2024 Masters sparkle. We learned in 2020 – when the tournament was held in November – why early spring in Georgia sees Augusta National at its peak. The firmness in the surfaces was ideal, aided by dry, windy weather in the first two rounds. Once the winds abated, however, the course was in ideal shape to reward good shots and punish errant ones. That’s always a fine line at Augusta, but this time it was definitely on the correct side of the ledger.

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Round of the year? That has to be Scheffler shooting 66 after being arrested before the second round of the PGA Championship. It wasn’t the lowest score that week, but for sheer grit in an unexpected (not to mention bizarre) situation, it was the best.

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Xander Schauffele was always going to win a major. It was just a matter of time. The fact that he shot 21-under at the PGA and still had to sink a six-foot putt on the 72nd green to do it says two things: 1) soft conditions rendered Valhalla defenceless, and 2) Schauffele owns patience and determination in quantities equal to his talent.

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That Schauffele also went on to become the vaunted “Champion Golf of the Year” at Royal Troon served as additional confirmation of his major credentials. The composed Californian displays no weaknesses and seems to revel in the biggest events and on the toughest courses (the birdiefest at Valhalla notwithstanding). His final nine holes at Troon were as flawless as they come.

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The evolution and transformation of Bryson DeChambeau has been fascinating to watch in recent years. Your columnist saw him live in the flesh at LIV Golf Adelaide and his power and dedication are simply awesome to see up close. He hits the ball in a manner not many can even contemplate replicating. Yet, it’s the transformation of DeChambeau the person, not DeChambeau the golfer, that has been most revealing. He ‘gets it’. OK, so there’s still a little American brashness there, but the cocky edge is gone and was replaced by humility. He is a richly deserving US Open champion.

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In the aftermath of losing the US Open, Rory McIlroy withdrew from the next week’s PGA Tour event and opted to take almost a month away from competitive play before returning at the Scottish Open. A week later at Royal Troon, he revealed an insight we can all relate to. He described how it took him “three, four, five days” for the disappointment to turn into motivation. This game kicks you; it taunts, teases and tempts. Even at the highest level, where it’s a job, there remains an addictive quality to golf.

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McIlroy’s malaise highlights another unique element to this sport. Those of us in the media covering the game have also felt what the top players feel, just not to the same level of prestige. The tightening feeling that comes with the pressure of trying to close out a tournament? We’ve been there, too – just in a pennant match or monthly medal, not a major championship. But, pressure is still pressure. With due respect to our brethren covering other sports, not many AFL writers have faced a kick after the siren with the game in the balance and perhaps fewer rugby league writers have ever pulled on the boots. Golf writers are perhaps as well equipped to write about the game as any in sport because we’ve also been there, in our own small way.

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Bleating about ‘fairness’ was evident at the Open Championship, even if it was minimal. Yes, chance is a palpable component of links golf and yes, the weather can absolutely favour part of the field – often to extremes. However, that’s the nature of links golf in a capricious climate like Britain’s. If a ‘fair’ game is what you’re seeking, golf perhaps isn’t the sport for you.

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It took three goes – and a year uninterrupted by a virus or pandemic – but Olympic golf came of age in Paris. More buy-in from the players, incredible engagement from the French fans and two electric finishes by two outstanding golfers provided the momentum the concept needed. OK, so maybe the 72-hole strokeplay format is here to stay, but adding a mixed event (global schedules willing) will ignite it even further.

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Lydia Ko personifies class. If she does indeed retire at 30, golf will be far poorer for her absence.

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Steph Kyriacou’s poise at the Evian Championship spoke volumes. She looked so calm as the tournament reached its crescendo – and played like a seasoned veteran. She didn’t win, of course, but she held the outright lead after 70 holes, played the last two holes in even-par and was simply overrun. Her time will come, because she’s too talented for it not to and because it was not a catastrophic loss; rather, it was one laced with more good vibes than bad. 

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The women’s professional game was far more entertaining in 2024 than the men’s. And that’s a good thing.

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Meanwhile, watching a PGA Tour event and a LIV Golf tournament in the same weekend feels like watching rugby union alongside rugby league. They’re kinda the same but also very different.

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The longer the PGA Tour–Saudi PIF standoff drags on, the better LIV Golf looks. They’ve played the long game here, prepared to be patient and let the flaws in the PGA Tour model become exposed with the passing of each week and month. Time is the incumbent’s enemy here, and an asset for the newcomer.

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Whatever happens there, the PGA Tour’s already-approved restructure, which will take effect in 2026, is further indication of how asleep at the wheel the organisation has become. Rather than address chronic pace-of-play issues, it instead elected to chop field sizes. Rather than embrace the everyman quality of Monday qualifying, the tour reduced or eliminated the number of spots available through that avenue. Have the tour’s top brass been paying attention to their ‘product’?

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The Official World Golf Ranking continues to become more redundant by the day.

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The American side did enough to claim a Solheim Cup that had eluded it for an intriguingly long time. Yet the repeated benching of Leona Maguire highlighted that there are either too many players selected on each side for Solheim, Ryder and Presidents Cup contests, or not enough pairs matches played. This point was reinforced a few weeks later when multiple International team members were benched for multiple days at the Presidents Cup.

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Speaking of which, the Presidents Cup once again drew attention to its inadequacies far more than its positives with another lopsided result in favour of the Americans. Unless player eligibility issues are resolved beforehand, if I were Kingston Heath Golf Club or the Victorian Government, I would be finding a way to opt out of the 2028 staging, Commonwealth Games-style.

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How bad is the standard of course care by everyday golfers? We loved the impassioned newsletter entry written by the head pro at one top 50-ranked club that was sent to its members in August. It borderline begged the membership to remember that repairing divots, raking bunkers and fixing pitchmarks is not the job of “somebody else”. Hear, hear.

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Shorter courses inbuilt within regular golf courses – where a set of tees makes every par 4 play about 200 metres and every par 5 about 300 metres – is an ingeniously simple idea that’s time has come.

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Quote of the year: It’s unattributed, coming from the vast ether that is the internet, but it’s a gem: “Using the professional game as your barometer for golf is like getting marriage advice from porn.” 

Five questions that will frame 2025

• Who’ll get the bigger slice of the global golf calendar once the PGA Tour and Saudi Public Investment Fund finally arrive on middle ground?
• What’s next for the Australian Open?
• Who’ll have the better year, Minjee or Min Woo Lee?
• Is the Ryder Cup ticket-price gouge reflective of market forces, the last straw in golf administrators’ utter disregard for golf fans, or both?
• What will the world of golf look like next January?

 Photo: Mike Mulholland,morgan hancock/getty images