From left: Rickie Fowler, Garrick Higgo, Max Homa and Michael Thorbjornsen.getty imagesJustin RayTue, January 13, 2026 at 8:32 PM UTC·8 min read

With the 2026 PGA Tour season set to kick off in Hawaii later this week, marquee names and storylines will dominate lookahead exercises across professional golf.

But what do the numbers say about potential breakout stars this year? And what statistics and trends point to potential bounce-back campaigns among veteran players? I dove into some key metrics to identify strong candidates to fill these roles in 2026. Some names will ring familiar, while others sneak under the radar - but only for a short while longer.

Pierceson Coody has spent the entirety of his golf life walking in the tall shadow of expectation; he's a third generation touring pro and grandson of 1971 Masters winner Charles Coody. The 25-year-old Texan has repeatedly met the moment by way of an ascent to the top of the World Amateur Golf Ranking, a team national championship at Texas and a trio of Korn Ferry Tour wins.

Now, the numbers indicate 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 both the 2024 and '25 seasons. Of that group, Coody made the biggest leap in strokes gained ball striking 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 in green in regulation 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 strokes gained ball striking (+1.40) and 8th in scoring average.

Key stat to improve on: putting from 15 to 20 feet. Coody ranked outside the top 150 on Tour in make percentage from that range in each of the last two seasons. Getting that number just up to Tour average would be consequential.

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. It's Higgo, who ascended from 159th in strokes gained total on Tour in 2024 to 22nd last year. That leap of 137 spots is easily the highest among qualifying players (second-biggest jump: Alex Smalley, up 115 spots).

Higgo's win last April at the Corales Puntacana was clearly his season highlight, but the most promising part of his statistical 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 bogey avoidance. Last season, the only player with a lower bogey rate on Tour was Scottie Scheffler.

Key stat to improve on: rough proximity. Higgo ranked 160th last year in average proximity from the rough (47' 3"), more than two full feet worse than the PGA Tour average. The good news is he has plenty of physical talent to change that; Higgo is top 20 on Tour in clubhead speed.

Major League Baseball probably has the most pronounced midway season break in American pro sports - before and after the All-Star Game are universally regarded as a key checkpoint in a marathon season. Players' numbers are often referred to with that dividing line. For the PGA Tour, there are different ways to slice it, but a general "halfway" point between Hawaii and East Lake is the beginning of May.

In 2025, there were exactly 100 players last season who had 30 or more qualifying PGA Tour rounds on either side of that divider. Among the list of players who improved their performance most in the second half compared to the first is Fowler, whose improvement of 1.45 strokes gained total per round is 7th-best among that group.

Fowler finished the 2025 season with a flourish. getty images

Fowler leapt up more than 100 spots from 2024 to 2025 in bogey avoidance (140th to 28th), and he finished the season with T6 and T7 finishes in his two FedExCup Playoff starts.

Key stat to improve on: approach play. Fowler got back in the winner's circle in 2023, a season in which he climbed into the top-10 on the PGA Tour in strokes gained approach. That number crumbled to 124th in 2024 before making a modest improvement last season. Fowler's two strong playoff performances featured two of his best iron play weeks of the year, a potential flash of what's to come.

There are few ballstriking talents with the immense promise of former U.S. Junior Amateur champion Michael Thorbjornsen. In 2025, he pulled off the rare statistical double of leading the Tour in both total driving and greens in regulation. The list of other players to do that in the last 30 seasons is illustrious: Hal Sutton in 1998, David Duval in 1999, Tiger Woods in 2000 and Henrik Stenson in 2015.

Big-time achievements quickly followed for each of those star players after achieving that ballstriking zenith. Sutton went on to win the Players in 2000. Duval broke through and won his major at The Open in 2001. Amid some of the most dominant golf ever played, Woods completed the "Tiger Slam" in '01. Stenson went on to outduel Phil Mickelson to win The Open in 2016.

That grand a leap might be an unfair expectation for Thorbjornsen in 2025 - he's played in only one major championship as a professional - but it speaks to his tremendous potential. In his last start of 2025, the RSM Classic, Thorbjornsen entered the final round just two shots off the lead before ultimately finishing in a tie for 7th. That first PGA Tour victory is coming soon.

Key stat to improve on: strokes gained putting. It's a broad brush here, but Thorbjornsen ranked outside the top 100 on Tour in virtually every key putting metric a year ago. That includes the all-telling strokes gained, where he was 120th. The only time Thorbjornsen finished a week in the top 20 of a Tour field in putting was at the 3M Open, where he finished T4.

Consider this: In the seven seasons in which the Korn Ferry Tour has handed out 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 didn't follow the KFT last season, Keefer's vault upward in the Official World Golf Ranking would surprise you. He ended the year in 48th position, immediately behind Wyndham Clark and Si Woo Kim. And, yes, that top-50 EOY finish earned Keefer an invitation to Augusta National this coming April.

Keefer exhibited 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, 2nd in scrambling and 10th in putting average. He finished his year with a top-10 at the PGA Tour's RSM Classic, too.

Key stat to improve on: PGA Tour starts. It's the simplest of observations, but Keefer doesn't yet have the reps on the world's biggest professional circuit, having played in just six PGA Tour events. As hot as he's been the last 18 months up, the ascent may slow a bit early in 2026.

After finishing in the top 10 in nearly 30% of his PGA Tour starts from 2021 through 2023, Max Homa has just five such finishes in the last two seasons. His stalled career ascent led to a swing change, which started to bear fruit when he shot 64 in Round 2 of the PGA Championship. More consistent play came at the end of 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 averaging -0.65 strokes gained tee-to-green per round for the '25 Tour season. From that point until 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 have seen for most of the last 24 months.

Key stat to improve on: birdie conversion percentage. This is a two-tiered number of sorts: Homa's improving approach play will inherently result in more realistic birdie looks. That's going to lead to a higher percentage of converted putts, a category in which he ranked 5th in 2023. The last two seasons, he's ranked 86th and 71st, respectively. Homa ranked in the top 10 on Tour in most of the overarching putting categories just three seasons ago, and there's no reason to think he can't rediscover that form soon.

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