The PGA Tour continues this week with the PGA Championship, with Jason Dufner among its previous winners.
Xander Schauffele is the current defending champion of the PGA Championship, winning at Valhalla in 2024.
He also won The Open Championship last year, and is now in the field at Quail Hollow for the latest tournament on the PGA Tour.
Rory McIlroy has been backed to win the PGA Championship, having just completed the career grand slam at The Masters.
He has already won the former on two occasions, with those wins coming either side of a first major success for Dufner.
Jason Dufner pinpoints the two biggest changes he has witnessed on the PGA Tour
The 2013 PGA Championship remains the American’s only major win, with Dufner now sharing his perspective on the current PGA Tour scene ahead of this week’s event.
Speaking of the two biggest changes to golf since he started out on the PGA Tour in 2000, he said on Son of a Butch with Claude Harmon: “The biggest thing which comes to mind is the speed. Speed to me was never a skill when I first started.
“I turned pro in 2000, so 24 years and played 19 years on the tour, 15 or more events and speed wasn’t a skill. Guys had speed, but nobody trained for it or thought about it.
“And now speed has become a skill and I would say it’s probably become the most dominant skill in the game and what I mean by that is you can train for speed, you can gain it quickly, if you are in a certain age group, you can pick up 10mph club head speed pretty quickly and that can propel you into being able to play at a higher level, as long as you can play the game a little bit and are competitive.
“But I also think it has taken away a little bit of the game and the skill set within the game. I would say that I see guys that have speed, but as an all-around player maybe not as polished as what maybe I needed when I first started.
“Another thing is that the skills I needed to play on tour and play well on tour took me a long time to acquire.
“I had to do a lot of my own practice, research and trial and error. That’s another thing that has changed. When I first got on tour there was a lot of trial and error.
| Rank | Player | Average | Total ball speed | Total attempts |
| 1 | Aldrich Potgieter | 190.44 | 47,801.45 | 251 |
| 2 | Min Woo Lee | 187.97 | 60,714.60 | 323 |
| 3 | Niklas Norgaard | 187.46 | 48,178.03 | 257 |
| 4 | Rasmus Højgaard | 186.88 | 55,316.95 | 296 |
| 5 | Nicolai Højgaard | 186.70 | 31,738.16 | 170 |
“You didn’t have Trackman, or the 3D technology we have now in teaching. Nobody really explored strength and conditioning as it related to golf.
“Tiger [Woods] came along around the same time and he was training but it wasn’t golf specific. And I would argue to a point that the game is a bit easier now than it was.”
What is Jason Dufner’s history on the PGA Tour?
Dufner has enjoyed a successful career since turning pro in 2000, with the 48-year-old having made 447 PGA Tour starts.
He boasts five wins in his career so far, with his two-stroke triumph over Jim Furyk at the 2013 PGA Championship the most notable.
| Year | Wins | Tournaments |
| 2017 | 1 | the Memorial Tournament |
| 2016 | 1 | CareerBuilder Challenge |
| 2013 | 1 | PGA Championship |
| 2012 | 2 | HP Byron Nelson Championship Zurich Classic of New Orleans |
The American’s first success came at the 2012 Zurich Classic of New Orleans, with his most recent arriving at the Memorial Tournament in 2017.
In the 2025 PGA Tour season, Dufner has made four starts so far, but has missed the cut on three occasions, finishing T75 at the Puerto Rico Open.
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