Ranking Golf's Biggest Surprises So Far in 2015

The 2015 PGA Tour season is only about a third complete, but there have already been enough surprising storylines to fill a whole year.

Whether it’s Jordan Spieth's meteoric rise, the roller coaster that is Tiger Woods or Ryo Ishikawa’s penchant for octopus-print pants, there’s been a little something to capture the imagination of even the most unflappable golf fan.

All sports feature a human element that transcends the field of play to surprise players and unsuspecting fans alike, and the PGA Tour is no different.

When good players go years without a win, breaking that streak becomes cause for wonder. When annoying personal quirks get on opponents’ nerves, sparks (and profanity) can fly—even on national television. And when young phenoms defy the odds against seasoned veterans, they can become overnight legends.

All those things and more have happened already this year, so let’s take a look at the biggest surprises of the 2015 golf season so far, ranked from least surprising to most surprising.

10. Apparently, Nobody Likes Bubba Watson

When we think of the PGA Tour, we generally imagine a high degree of civility and respectful camaraderie among the players. After all, how many other sports group competitors in intimate pairings where they must either get along or risk having a terribly awkward, six-hour reenactment of Mean Girls every round on national television?

However, despite the PGA Tour’s gentlemanly appearance, it is far from a love-in.

According to an ESPN “secret survey” of 103 tour pros conducted earlier this year, Bubba Watson in particular did not receive much love from his peers. When asked whom they would be least likely step up to defend in a parking-lot fight, 23 of his fellow pros filled in the blank with the name of the two-time Masters champion.

That number is especially impressive when you consider Patrick Reed, the No. 2 choice, received fewer than 10 votes.

One explanation is that Watson is no stranger to swearing up an abrasive storm on the course (note the classic video above) and complaining about adverse course conditions that affect everyone equally. But you’d think he’d get at least a little love for being part of the first PGA boy band for charity, right?

OK, on second thought maybe that singing didn’t help his case much…

9. Tiger Wood’s Worst Round Ever

As you’ve probably heard, Tiger Woods just posted the worst round of his professional career when he shot 85 in Round 3 of the Memorial Tournament on Saturday (as noted by Golf.com in the above video). This may be considered surprising for two reasons.

If you are a diehard Tiger fan, you probably didn’t believe at the start of the year that the (arguably) greatest golfer of all time could ever sink quite this low on the course. On the other hand, if you thought his career was well and truly over after last year’s surgery and this year’s withdrawal from the Farmers Insurance Open in February, then you might have been surprised this 85 happen sooner.

Over the course of his entire professional career, “spanning nearly 1,150 rounds,” per CNN’s Steve DiMeglio, Woods has only shot three rounds in the 80s. His second-worst score was an 82 in Round 2 of the Waste Management Phoenix Open this January. Before that, you have to go all the way back to his 81 in the third round of the 2002 British Open.

After Tiger’s impressive rebound at the 2015 Masters (more on that later), it seemed like his days in the 80s would be relegated once again to the “rare fluke” files. However, shooting two historically abysmal rounds in the same year is starting to look more like a shocking trend than an anomaly—and that’s something that seems a little premature in the eyes of many Tiger fans.

8. Rickie Fowler Finally Got His Second Win

From his inaugural PGA Tour season in 2008 to the start of the 2015 calendar year, Rickie Fowler had only won a single tournament (the Wells Fargo Championship in 2012). This May, he finally added his second title with a playoff victory at The Players Championship, when he birdied the infamous No. 17 island green (see the above video).

Granted, wins on tour are not easy—and Fowler was nowhere near Robert Gamez’s record of 15 years and six months between tour victories, per Derek Evers of GolfDigest.com—but the 26-year-old’s drought was still surprising, given his admirable career record.

Since 2009, Fowler has captured seven runner-up honors and finished in the top 10 on 36 occasions, proving he has what it takes to get into winning position. In 2014, he finished in the top five in all four majors, per Coleman McDowell of Golf.com, which puts him in the exclusive company of Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus.

However, the absence of trophies before this year’s Players had clearly affected his reputation among his fellow professionals. A recent, anonymous pole conducted by Sports Illustrated revealed Fowler tied with Ian Poulter as the “most overrated player in golf,” (via Golf.com), when they both earned 24 percent of the vote.

What was Fowler’s response to the poll?

“I laughed,” he said, per Jason Sobel of ESPN, after shooting a 69 to open The Players Championship. “I thought it was funny.”

Three days later, he was laughing his way to the bank with a $1.8 million winner’s check.

7. Floral-Print Pants Are Back in Style!

Chris Graythen/Getty Images

The reports are in, and according to PGATour.com’s style insider Greg Monteforte, “subtle jacquard” and “bold macro floral pattern” print pants are all the rage this season on the PGA Tour. This is good news for literally everyone, but especially the tour’s patron saint of bold pants: Ryo Ishikawa.

Ishikawa is no stranger to fashion notoriety. He often appears in best-dressed lists, thanks to his tendency to establish trends with what Khaki Crusader fashion columnist Sean Hotchkiss calls “a bit of whimsy,” per Glenmuir.com.

In addition to imaginative prints, 2015 has also belonged to the No. 5. Five-pocket pants, which feature “two back pockets, two rounded front pockets and a small coin pocket in one of the front pockets that is perfect for a ball marker,” according to Monteforte, have taken the Association by storm.

Keeping up with that numerical trend, Fowler has been leading the revival of five-panel hats with his unique combination of “80s and 90s throwback-style” caps from Cobra Puma Golf, per Monteforte. Naturally, other pros are following suit.

It’s always surprising to see what the tour comes up with when they try to push the fashion envelope. However, if the pros want to see their sense of style rise any higher than No. 7 on this list, they’ll have to start dressing more like Bill Murray.

6. Davis Love III Was Reselected as the U.S. Ryder Cup Captain

In February, Davis Love III was selected as the United States’ 2016 Ryder Cup captain (noted in the above video from Golf.com). Love led the U.S. team to a one-point loss in 2012 on American soil before things went from bad to worse with Tom Watson’s “dysfunctional” 2014 team, per Kevin Cunningham of Golf.com.

It isn’t surprising the United States Ryder Cup task force—which included Love among its 11 members—was looking to turn things around after that debacle. But it is surprising their new direction involved returning to a former captain.

The New York Times’ Karen Crouse explained the task force’s reasoning, saying, “Love was awarded the captaincy because he is not a self-promoter. In the wake of the Americans’ loss to Europe last fall—their sixth in the past seven Cups—the other members of the task force were looking for a leader focused on the big picture.”

The task force clearly felt it was safer to select a veteran captain who came up just short his last time around than to roll the dice on an untested leader.

Considering the PGA of America is also granting Love a fourth captain’s pick (one more than Watson had in 2014) and allowing him to make those picks closer to the start of the actual competition suggests Team USA believes success is just lurking in the finer details of that aforementioned big picture.

Love’s comments on his appointment also seem to verify this mentality. Said Love: “I’m here with the same goal I had in 2012, but not as the same captain. I don’t think we have to make massive changes. We have to make some small changes that add up to half a point here or half a point there.”

Whether or not those small changes will be enough to turn the tide of eight U.S. losses in the last 10 Ryder Cups remains to be seen.

5. The U.S. Open’s Historic New Home

David Cannon/Getty Images

This year will mark the first time in its 115-year history the U.S. Open will be played in the Pacific Northwest. It’s a surprising move, considering both the tournament's geographic history and the region’s trademark rainy conditions, which could realistically cause lengthy delays. 

“This is a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking for the USGA,” said USGA executive director Mike Davis last June, per Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard. “The last time we truly came to a new golf course for the U.S. Open was Minneapolis in 1970 at Hazeltine. To say we are excited to come to Chambers Bay would be the understatement of the year.”

At first glance, the public, links-style Chambers Bay course looks more brown and blue than traditional green (and feels more appropriate for a British Open than an American one). The mixture of fescue grasses, distinctive sand dunes and the waters of Puget Sound will give next week’s U.S. Open a unique canvas that is as challenging (par 70 and 7,742 yards) as it is beautiful.

Chambers Bay was actually built in 2007 with the express intention of hosting the U.S. Open. After New York’s Winged Foot withdrew its application for a sixth 2015 U.S. Open, the door was open for the Washington course to pounce—and pounce it did.

Some players are not overly excited about the venue, however. Ian Poulter tweeted, per Scott Hanson of the Seattle Times, “Well several players have played Chambers Bay in prep for US Open. The reports back are its [sic] a complete farce. I guess someone has to win.”

After playing Chambers Bay himself, fellow pro Ryan Palmer added: “As far as the greens are concerned, it’s not a championship golf course.”

GolfCourseArchitecture.net’s Jay Blasi, though, saw things differently. He assessed the unique greenside conditions, saying: “These sideboards, backboards, kicker slopes, rolls, swales, hillocks, spines and bowls can separate eager competitors from those who might fall away, frustrated by what they see as ‘unfairness.’”

Chambers Bay is by no means untested—it hosted the 2010 U.S. Amateur, after all. But we still have to wonder if this criticism is truly warranted, or if it is just another case of “haters gonna hate vs. players gonna play” a la Taylor Swift (circa 2014)? Only time will tell.

4. Phil Mickelson’s Winless Streak Continues

Darron Cummings/Associated Press

Phil Mickelson’s inability to win the U.S. Open is nothing new, but his inability to win anything on tour certainly is a novel turn. The five-time major winner has claimed 42 events in total since his professional debut in 1988, but his last trophy came all the way back in 2013. 

In the past two years, Lefty has only managed three top-10 finishes. When you consider he had seven top-10 finishes in 2013 alone, you can’t help but be surprised by his sudden decline in form.

It’s not that he has completely collapsed and is missing cuts left and right like Tiger Woods, though—at least not yet. Mickelson consistently made the same number of cuts (18) and missed the same number (three) from 2012-2014, but he is already at his limit for missed cuts (three) in 2015 if he wants to keep that streak alive.

Lefty’s fans will remind us that he followed up his last winless season of 2003 with two wins in 2004 and four wins in 2005, but the more conservative among us can be forgiven for assuming the soon-to-be-45-year-old is well past his prime. 

All will be forgotten, though, if Mickelson manages to complete his career Grand Slam at next week’s U.S. Open.

3. Rory McIlroy’s Poor Start, No Grand Slam

Though Mickelson has been on the final leg of his career Grand Slam for a longer period of time, it is Rory McIlroy’s quest for the coveted sweep that dominated the golf world’s attention at the start of this year.

After he captured the British Open in 2014, all that remained for the then-25-year-old Northern Irishman was the 2015 Masters. However, inconsistent play at Augusta (which he notes in the above clip) yielded only a fourth-place finish and left the world No. 1 at least one year shy of becoming the sixth player to complete a career Grand Slam.

At the start of the calendar year, McIlroy had been considered by many to be the early favorite for the green jacket (he eventually settled in at 11-2 odds, per Odds Shark). At that time, the idea of him not winning would have been considered somewhat of a surprise, but not as much of a surprise at his poor overall start to the 2015 tour season.

McIlroy rounded off 2014 by winning the British Open, WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and PGA Championship before claiming T-5, T-8 and T-2 finishes in his last three competitive outings. To put it plainly: He was on fire.

McIlroy began 2015, however, with a missed cut at the Honda Classic, followed by unconvincing T-9 and T-11 finishes at the WGC-Cadillac Championship and Arnold Palmer Invitational, respectively. No hot streak can last forever, but many fans who had been hoping to see McIlroy fill the vacuum left by Tiger’s decline were still somewhat surprised.

Though it was certainly something of a surprise deceleration when we watched it unfold in real time this past winter, the Northern Irishman’s two-month blip in form will not be considered quite as shocking in the grand scheme of his career.

2. Tiger Woods’ Rebound at the Masters

Chris Carlson/Associated Press

Speaking of the 2015 Masters, Tiger Woods also had a surprising turn in form. In his case, though, it was a turn for the better.

After Tiger withdrew from the Farmers Insurance Open citing injury in February, the world spent much of the next two months wondering whether he would even be able to play the first major in April.

When news finally broke that he would indeed be competing for his fifth green jacket, the focus turned to speculation about which Tiger the world could expect to see on the tee: the vintage dynamo, the aging has-been or something in between?

Experts, like Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee, were convinced Tiger couldn’t put together a complete game.

“Given what we’ve seen, it’s unimaginable to me that in this short period of time, he would have been able to come to any sort of manageable level of short game,” said Chamblee in a Golf Channel teleconference, (via Golf.com’s Coleman McDowell). “I read where people said it wasn't the yips. Well, you can call it whatever you want, but it's catastrophically bad, what we saw.”

However, to the surprise of virtually everyone, Tiger managed to finish T-17 at Augusta after posting respectable rounds of 73, 69, 68 and 73. He was never really in contention on Sunday, but he had vastly improved his “catastrophic” short game in just a couple of months, put together a solid tournament from start to finish and did not withdraw with one of the many injuries that had been plaguing him in recent years.

Golf.com’s Michael Bamberger called Tiger’s return a “smashing success.” The Guardian’s Andy Bull claimed Tiger had played his “best golf at Augusta since 2011” (Woods finished tied for fourth that year). CBS Sports’ Kyle Porter said, “Woods’ week was incredibly encouraging,” adding, “If you would have told me he would finish in the top 20 this time 10 days ago, I would have laughed.”

Tiger’s recent form reminds us he is still all over the map, but his showing at the Masters after a two-month hiatus from competitive golf was inarguably one of the biggest surprises of the season.

1. Jordan Spieth Won the Masters

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

Tiger’s return was remarkable, but Jordan Spieth’s Masters victory was the stuff of legends. The 21-year-old made history when he became the second-youngest player to earn a green jacket (behind only Tiger, of course). He was also only the fifth person to lead the Masters from start to finish.

In addition to those feats, Spieth registered 28 total birdies to beat Phil Mickelson’s previous record of 26, per Gary Morely of CNN, and tied Woods’ tournament record score of 18 under par through four rounds.

The Washington Post’s Neil Greenberg even made a case that Spieth’s 2015 Masters was a “more dominating” performance than Tiger’s 1997 showing, reasoning Augusta is tougher now than it was back then.

Some, however, may try to make the argument that Spieth’s Master’s win was not entirely out of the blue.

When he finished tied for second in his 2014 debut at Augusta, for example, you might have intuited he was destined for great things at Augusta. When he started 2015 with a win at the Hero World Challenge, followed by another win at the Valspar Championship and two second-place finishes immediately preceding the Masters, you could have said all the momentum was in his favor.

Arguing that these factors detracted from the accomplishment’s “surprise” factor, though, would be ignoring the big picture. When a 21-year-old wins the Masters against a field of seasoned professionals and previous major winners, his accomplishment will always be a surprise for the ages, regardless of any extenuating factors.