The 2025 PGA Tour season ended at the RSM Classic last weekend, as Sami Valimaki won the final event.
From Rory McIlroy’s Masters victory to Scottie Scheffler’s dominance, it has been another incredible year for professional golf.
And it was not only the biggest names who excelled in 2025; plenty of new faces emerged at the top of the leaderboards.
Golf writer Rex Hoggard has now picked a rising “superstar” as the newcomer of the year on the PGA Tour.
- READ MORE: Former world number nine with five PGA Tour wins loses card after making just three cuts all season
Rex Hoggard names Ben Griffin the PGA Tour’s latest superstar
Ben Griffin was already an established PGA Tour player before this season, finishing 2024 in 65th position in the Official World Golf Ranking.
However, Benny Booms had never won on the Tour or even made a cut at a major championship until 2025.
He has since won three events this season: the Zurich Classic (with Andrew Novak), the Charles Schwab Challenge, and the World Wide Technology Championship.
Do you think the PGA Tour reducing the amount of cards for 2026 to 100 is a good thing?
Griffin also made the United States Ryder Cup team and was one of America’s few bright spots at Bethpage Black.
“It was Ben Griffin. And I don’t even know if that qualifies,” Hoggard explained. “However, he had not won before this season.
“I go back to last fall; I’ve used this as an example of what it means to get inside that 51 to 60 category, and Ben did that last year.
“So he got into those first two signature events of this season, and he was really able to turn that into a career year. He ended up winning three times on the PGA Tour.
“I would argue he was one of two highlights for the US team at the Ryder Cup, and I think he became a legitimate superstar, which he wasn’t before this year. So he would be mine.”
Ben Griffin prize money in 2025 PGA Tour season
There are few better ways to assess a player’s success than prize money earned, and Ben Griffin certainly became a lot richer this season.
He won more prize money on the PGA Tour in 2025 than all but seven players, including McIlroy, Scheffler, and Tommy Fleetwood.
| Rank | Player | Money | Wins |
| 1 | Scottie Scheffler | $27,659,550 | 6 |
| 2 | Tommy Fleetwood | $18,496,238 | 1 |
| 3 | Rory McIlroy | $16,992,418 | 3 |
| 4 | Russell Henley | $14,707,570 | 1 |
| 5 | J.J. Spaun | $13,278,222 | 1 |
| 6 | Ben Griffin | $11,724,352 | 3 |
| 7 | Justin Thomas | $10,896,155 | 1 |
| 8 | Sepp Straka | $10,650,894 | 2 |
| 9 | Patrick Cantlay | $9,441,931 | 0 |
| 10 | Justin Rose | $8,857,976 | 1 |
Griffin’s three victories obviously make up the bulk of his earnings, but he also had two big results at majors this year.
He finished tied-8th at the PGA Championship and T10 at the US Open, both of which returned six-figure cheques.
Receive exclusive golf news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
