The Fried Egg Golf Podcast · The Fried Egg

Scottie or Rory's Year? Answering the Biggest Questions from 2025

·1 hr 24 min·5 clips

Rory McIlroy had the Masters, a second Players, the Irish Open, and a road Ryder Cup.

Andy Johnson opens with a familiar Fried Egg opener and then steers the show toward the end of the golf year. He brings in Kevin Van Valkenburg and Joseph LaMagna to help sort through the biggest questions left by 2025. The conversation starts broad and then settles into the state of the pro game. Scottie and Rory are the main reference points for where the sport sits now. From there, the discussion turns to what actually counts as a convincing season at the elite level. One of the central ideas is that the standard keeps moving up. A golfer can no longer assume that getting back to an old level will be enough. Jon Rahm becomes the clearest example of that tension, with iron play raised as one area that needs to improve. The tone stays conversational even when the point gets sharp. The hosts also talk about how careers in golf can rise and fall in a way that looks more like a parabola than a straight line. Age, form, and competitive pressure all matter in that picture. The episode keeps coming back to the idea that the sport itself has changed around its stars. Scottie has raised the baseline. Rory has also gotten better. That leaves less room for nostalgia and more pressure on current production. The conversation asks who really had the year, who is still capable of taking the next step, and what the sport will expect from its best players in 2026. By the end, the episode feels like a useful checkpoint rather than a victory lap. It is less interested in settling every debate than in sharpening the terms of the debate. That is the kind of golf talk this show does well.

As heard by us

A year-end golf conversation that keeps returning to a sharper question: what counts as elite now?

Andy Johnson, joined by Kevin Van Valkenburg and Joseph LaMagna, uses a year-end golf discussion to move from 2025 toward 2026 without losing the point of the conversation.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a big-picture golf debate on 2025 and a look ahead to 2026.

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