The 2025 FedExCup season is over. Oh, how time flies. A few things have stayed the same since the start of the year. Mainly, Scottie Scheffler is still the dominant force in the sport, on a generational trajectory with a torrid winning pace.

Behind him, much has shifted. As is the case with any PGA TOUR season, new stars and storylines emerged while others faltered and will spend the fall hoping to get back to the level they began the year at.

Ahead of the start of the FedExCup Fall in two weeks, The Five will review some of the biggest risers and fallers of the 2025 season. First up, whose stock jumped the most this season? Next week, we will look at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Tommy Fleetwood

The new FedExCup champion feels like the right place to start. Fleetwood was a well-respected, top TOUR pro leading into the year, but it’s hard to argue the Englishman didn’t enter new heights – on the course and off it – in 2025.

Fleetwood’s quest for his first TOUR win captured the hearts and minds of the golf world, collectively pulling for the happy-go-lucky star to finally conquer the one feat that eluded him. His heartbreaking defeats at the Travelers Championship and FedEx St. Jude Championship only strengthened the fandom and buzz around him.

But that popularity doesn’t skyrocket unless Fleetwood consistently puts himself back in contention. He did so often in 2025, elevating his game to a new level with a remarkable consistency that rivaled, and outdid, any player not named Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy. Fleetwood bested the best of the best on the PGA TOUR, winning the TOUR Championship and FedExCup comfortably.

Fleetwood finished the FedExCup season third in scoring average, behind only Scheffler and McIlroy. Fleetwood was second in Strokes Gained: Total, ahead of McIlroy and behind Scheffler. He finished a career-best fifth in SG: Approach and was inside the top 20 in both around the green and putting. Fleetwood is up to a career-best sixth in the Official World Golf Ranking.

In short: Fleetwood was the complete package. Now, finally, he has the win to back it up and quiet the noise.

J.J. Spaun

From nearly losing his TOUR card to becoming a major champion and Ryder Cup automatic qualifier, J.J. Spaun’s career did a full 180 in a matter of nine months.

Spaun thrillingly won the U.S. Open, holing a 64-foot putt on the 18th hole to capture the breakthrough major title. It was the surprise result of the season, but not a win out of nowhere. Three months earlier, Spaun nearly unseated McIlroy and won the THE PLAYERS Championship, ultimately falling short in a playoff.

It was an intoxicating reminder of how fickle golf can be and how capable so many on TOUR are of changing their lives within a week. The type of story that inspired TOUR journeyman and those well down the ranks of the pro golf ecosystem, desperately trying to allow themselves to do the same.

Spaun was much more than a one-week wonder, though. He was a consistent force on TOUR, ranking seventh in scoring average and 10th in SG: Total. He’s seventh in the OWGR. And he will make his Ryder Cup debut next month at Bethpage Black.

That’s a heck of a year, Spaun.

Ben Griffin

Griffin vaulted from a middle-of-the-pack TOUR pro to a bona fide top-20 player with a breakthrough 2025 season, winning twice and pushing himself into Ryder Cup consideration.

Griffin’s jump was two-fold. First, he added considerable speed ahead of this season, gaining 10 yards of distance that transformed him from one of the shortest hitters on TOUR to an above-average threat off the tee. Combined with slight improvements in his approach game and putting and Griffin was ripe to elevate his game. Secondly, the 29-year-old North Carolina grad finally got comfortable on TOUR, which is often tricky for young players in their first seasons on TOUR, traveling to new cities and playing on golf courses they’ve seldom seen.

Griffin played his way into the Signature Events early in the season, allowing him to capitalize on the higher point events. Freed up with that status in hand, Griffin won the Zurich Classic of New Orleans with Andrew Novak, then grabbed his first solo win at the Charles Schwab Invitational.

Harris English

English returned to the winner’s circle for the first time since 2021 when he won the Farmers Insurance Open in February, but that was just the starting point to English’s ascent. For as consistent as English has been in his 14-year PGA TOUR career, his performance in majors was largely disappointing.

Not in 2025. English notched three top-12 finishes, more than he had in his previous 13 years combined. That included his two best finishes, where he finished runner-up at the PGA Championship and The Open Championship.

It’s an exciting peak for English at age 36, the start of a welcome renaissance to one of the TOUR’s best ball-strikers over the last decade. English will play in his second Ryder Cup next month.

Bud Cauley

No PGA TOUR member made a bigger jump in the OWGR in 2025 than Bud Cauley. The TOUR journeyman began the year ranked No. 303 in the world, buried in the rankings after missing three-plus years due to various injuries that stemmed from complications after a 2018 car accident. He returned in 2024, but without the form he expected of himself.

In that way, 2025 was a return to normal. And his jump to No. 55 in the FedExCup was evidence of the 35-year-old’s persistent talent.

Cauley’s resurgence came early in the year, registering a few solid but unremarkable starts in the first two months of the season before breaking out with a red-hot March. Cauley finished T6 at THE PLAYERS, T4 at the Valspar Championship and T5 at the Valero Texas Open.

Cauley was at risk of losing status without those finishes; now he’s set up for long-term success. Cauley played his way into the BMW Championship after starting the FedExCup Playoffs outside the top 50. That secured Cauley spots in all the 2026 Signature Events, notable for every player who qualified, but specifically for Cauley after years of professional turmoil. Cauley’s stock is rising. Can he push it higher in 2026?