2026 PGA Tour predictions, expert picks for Player of the Year, major champions, breakout performers

With football deep into the playoffs, conference play beginning in college basketball and the NBA still weeks away from its All-Star break, the sports world turns its attention to the 2026 PGA Tour season, which starts Thursday at the Sony Open in Hawaii. This week's tournament has plenty going for it, but a larger look at the game as a whole is required before the campaign gets underway.

Will 2026 be dominated by Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, who were seemingly making weekly headlines in 2025? Scheffler may have gotten off to a slow start, but by year's end, he closed off two additional legs of the career grand slam while again emerging as the PGA Tour of the Year. The opposite was the case for McIlroy, who finally reached the summit at Augusta National, winning his first Masters and achieving the career grand slam he sought for more than a decade, only to fall off a bit after the fact before finding his game again.

Might this year be the true breakout for Tommy Fleetwood, who went from never winning a PGA Tour event to capturing the Tour Championship and the massive FedEx Cup Playoffs payday that went along with it? Will Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas or Rickie Fowler truly rebound and justify their popularity with more trips to the winner's circle than the last few years?

There are plenty of questions to be answered as the season begins, and our CBS Sports experts will do their best to give you the lay of the land. Let's take a look at the names that should thrive and survive.

2026 PGA Tour predictions

Player of the Year

Scottie Scheffler: Yawn. "Bor-ing!" Scheffler is going to sprint into 2026 to make amends for his slow start in 2025. He has been up in the gym focusing on his endurance, and he has even picked up some speed with a new Taylormade driver in his bag. That's the area where he decided he has room to improve, and if the improvement comes as quickly as his putter became a weapon the last two seasons, watch out! By the end of 2026, the world No. 1 will be a member of the 25 PGA Tour wins, five major championships club. -- Patrick McDonald

Scottie Scheffler. Bold pick, right? It's just tough to envision a world where (health provided) he doesn't win five times, including a major. It would be incredibly tough for anyone else to top that kind of season. Scottie three-peats as Player of the Year and continues his march up the all-time list. -- Robby Kalland

Most wins (Scheffler excluded)

Xander Schauffele: For as important as 2024 was for raising Schauffele's stock, his 2025 was as important as locking him into being a blue-chip player. His injury clearly affected him for the majority of the year, but he found his stride in the fall with a strong showing at the Ryder Cup and a win at the Baycurrent Classic in Japan. From tee to green, he remained a solid producer, and he will just need to find his rhythm on the greens in 2026 to look more like the 2024 version of himself. He has the longest made cut streak on the PGA Tour and has notched 14 top-20 finishes in his last 15 major championships. -- McDonald

Tommy Fleetwood: The Lad finally broke through at the Tour Championship, and he might go on a tear in 2026. I've got Tommy picking up a major and a few other wins this season, and he should close the gap considerably on Rory McIlroy for No. 2 in the world by year's end. For a long time, Fleetwood would pop up, contend, lose and fade away. Last year, he just kept knocking on the door and refused to slide back after coming up short. He takes off in 2026. -- Kalland

Comeback Player of the Year

Jordan Spieth: A lesson from the 2025 season should be that injuries take a while to get over -- see Scheffler, Schauffele and even Spieth. After an offseason procedure on his wrist, in 2025, Spieth started showing legitimate signs that he is on the path back to being a top 20 player in the world. There is a lot of chatter about his iron play needing to improve (it does), but two areas I am looking at are his putting inside 10 feet (ditching his gamer) and his mentals (chilling out). Since his win at the 2017 Open at Royal Birkdale, where players return this summer, Spieth has only won two times on the PGA Tour. He adds to that this year. -- McDonald

Brooks Koepka: We haven't seen Brooks really contend for some time. His T12 at the U.S. Open last year was his best major finish in two years, and I don't think the rhythm and feel of LIV Golf ever captured his competitive mindset to bring out the best in his game. Maybe he is just past his prime, but at 35 years old, I believe there's more in the tank for Koepka, and a return to the PGA Tour schedule will help him find that level. -- Kalland

Breakout Player of the Year

Ryan Gerard: The confidence has always been there for the 26-year-old, and midway through the 2025 season, his game started to catch up. Gerard was a surprise fixture on the leaderboard at the PGA Championship before grabbing his maiden PGA Tour victory at the Barracuda Championship. Needing a fourth-place finish in the final event of the year on the DP World Tour to earn an invitation into the Masters, he traveled to Mauritius, where he fell in a playoff but secured himself a place on the tee sheet at Augusta National in April. He is as steady as they come from tee to green, and if he's able to find some semblance of comfort on the greens, Gerard will comfortably become a top 20 player in the world. (Bonus: Look for Tom McKibbin to make a name for himself out of LIV Golf in the 2026 majors. The 23-year-old is so well-rounded at this stage of his career and has improved in every aspect from season to season.) -- McDonald

Neal Shipley: He's a boom-or-bust player -- eight top 10s and two wins vs. 11 missed cuts last year on the Korn Ferry Tour -- but when he's on, he can hang with the absolute best. It doesn't hurt that Shipley is already a bit of a known commodity with a big personality, but it wouldn't be surprising if he snags some top 10s in big events this season on the PGA Tour and possibly notches a win to cement himself as a rising star. -- Kalland

Lock to win a major championship

Justin Rose: He will be 120 years old, and yet, I will still have faith in him winning a major. This should really go to Scheffler; it could go to McIlroy. But they are free spaces at this point, and you're looking for a little something extra, so why not the 45-year-old Englishman? We know what he can do at the Masters. He won his lone major championship in Philadelphia, where the PGA Championship is being played. He is a past U.S. Open winner, and he can never be doubted at The Open, either. -- McDonald

Tommy Fleetwood: It just doesn't seem fun to just put Scheffler in this space, though he will probably win another in 2026. Slotting in Fleetwood just shows I'm all-in with The Lad this year. What could possibly go wrong?! It's most likely to happen at The Open, but he's got the game to contend at all four majors. The ball-striking has always been there, but the confidence with the putter has started to show up more, and he has the belief now that he's going to finish rounds strong rather than limping to the finish. -- Kalland

FedEx Cup top five (at start of playoffs)

(1) Scottie Scheffler, (2) Xander Schauffele, (3) Justin Rose, (4) Hideki Matsuyama, (5) Matt McCarty: Besides being high on Scheffler and Schauffele, Rose being projected to win a major would likely find him in the mix here, too. Rounding out the top five is Matsuyama, who has quietly notched multiple-win campaigns in three of the last four years, and McCarty, who will raise some eyebrows. The left-hander gets his second look at all these golf courses in his sophomore campaign, which will only help. He's outside signature events as it stands, but expect him to play his way in and possibly win a tournament or two. -- McDonald

(1) Scottie Scheffler, (2) Tommy Fleetwood, (3) Rory McIlroy, (4) Xander Schauffele, (5) Viktor Hovland: Not stepping out on any real limbs here, but expect a big year from the top stars with Schauffele and Hovland in particular getting back into elite form and contending more regularly than we saw a year ago and getting some strong results in big events.

Surprise prediction

The PGA Tour makes plans to cancel the Presidents Cup. This is all gut, but if I'm PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp -- and I'm looking at the Presidents Cup -- I wonder how viable an event without some of its biggest names and personalities (Europeans) is long term. The event is scheduled out to 2030, and with it not holding a candle to the PGA of America's Ryder Cup, Rolapp may look in another direction for a team-style tournament. It's far too similar to its counterpart while simultaneously being far less compelling. Not a great combination. -- McDonald

Scottie Scheffler does not complete the career grand slam. Everyone has Shinnecock circled for Scheffler, and while it feels like it is only a matter of time before he adds his name to golf's most exclusive club, it won't happen in 2026. As we all saw with McIlroy, it's rarely as easy as it seems to conquer history. While I neither expect Scottie to go through a decade-long major drought like Rory nor get locked up in a Phil Mickelson-esque torture chamber at the U.S. Open, I do believe he'll have to go through some heartache at the national open before he wins it. The last two U.S. Open performances (even with a T7 at Oakmont) weren't what we're accustomed to seeing from Scheffler; he's still figuring out how to best approach U.S. Open setups. -- Kalland