Check out my rundown of the the top-5 news-making golfers of 2022.

1. Cameron Smith

2022 was one hell of a year for golf, but one subject dominated the first half, and may continue to do so over the next 12 months.

Like it or loathe it, LIV was monumental news, and there are probably half a dozen names that could make the top spot in this column. For me, Aussie Cam Smith tops the lot.

Having shown progression and winning form on the PGA Tour over the past 24 months, Smith raised his game last season, following up back-to-back wins at his home PGA Championship and the pairs competition, the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, and the Sony Open.

A stunning 34-under win at the Tournament of Champions, victory at the prestigious Sawgrass and a fourth top-10 at Augusta saw the 29-year-old make his way comfortably inside the top 10 in the world rankings, becoming one of the main challengers to Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, and Rory McIlroy for the number one slot.

Then the rumblings began.

Having already secured major winners such as Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka, the LIV rumor mill went into overdrive, strongly indicating that Smith and former Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama were the next targets. Most golf fans would have seen the Japanese player’s loss of form and would have expected him to make the leap over the now very progressive Aussie.

And then the most bizarre week.

Although fate looked to have nearly secured a St. Andrews victory for Rory McIlroy, both he and Viktor Hovland saw a four-shot overnight lead vanish down the stretch, with Smith simply out-playing them and performing beautifully on and around the hallowed putting surfaces.

After a best-of-the-day 64 had won the most famous trophy in golf, the Claret Jug, Smith faced a barrage of questions about where he went from this victory, with the push towards revealing whether he was a “yeah” or “no” to LIV.

It was a strange reply: “My team around me worries about all that stuff.” He convinced very few.

Of course, it would never stop there, and as the Aussie made his way to two of the three FedEx events (he pulled out of the middle one — the BMW — due to “injury”) he was constantly batting away the reporter’s questions.

He might have said, “I’m ready to cop some heat,” before continuing, “I understand what I’ve said, but as I said, I’m here to play to win the FedEx Cup Playoffs. That’s my number one goal, and whatever happens after that will come from me.” He might also have tried unconvincingly to detract from compatriot Cameron Percy’s view that both he and Marc Leishman were “gone,” but few took his side and at the end of August LIV confirmed they had landed their biggest catch to date.

Smith was clear about his reasons. He stated the signing was a “business decision,” whilst also mentioning that the worldwide LIV schedule was far more appealing:

“I’ve lived over here seven years now, and I love living in the U.S., but just little things like missing friends’ weddings, birthday parties and seeing your mates having a great time at rugby league games has been tough.”

Since joining the rebel tour, Smith has won once from five starts on LIV, with total earnings of just over $7 million, and turned up to dominate the Australian PGA for his third win in five years at the event, a tournament he enjoyed replaying in his local.

Cam Smith celebrating at an Australian pub is everything you think it would be. ?

— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) December 1, 2022

In his final event of the year, Smith missed the cut at the Australian Open, but that can’t take away the fact he’s had a year in every respect. Had he continued on the PGA Tour, he would have been news. The fact he didn’t make him even more so.

Unlike many of his fellow jumpers, Smith was getting better by the month and was on his way to the number one slot pretty soon. It will be up to the OWGR, but that he may still do makes him very much news of 2022 and 2023.

2. Lydia Ko

It’s a rare thing to keep top form going for five, 10, 15 years, and more. Players launch out of the blocks, but many have also suffered long periods of, well, nothing.

The PGA Tour may have had its young winners in recent years (Spieth, Wolff, Morikawa and Kim), but the LPGA outdoes them by several handfuls, with players such as Brooke Henderson, Lexi Thompson, Paula Creamer, and Morgan Pressel winning events before they were 19 years of age and again suffering long periods when the game just goes.

Lydia Ko, back-to-back winner of the Canadian Open at 15 and 16 years of age, trumps all those names and, despite the total of 19 LPGA wins over 10 years, 2022 was definitely her best yet.

The 25-year-old Korean-born superstar has only won five times since a stellar 2016, but three came this year, winning on her second outing of the year — the Gainbridge LPGA — and at two of her last three outings at the BMW Ladies and prestigious Tour Championship (final round highlights here).

Throughout the 22 events of her season, Ko made every weekend, winning three times and recording nine further top-five finishes to win her first Player of the Year award since 2015. Top that with a return to world No. 1 in what might be the densest LPGA field of all time, and we have a newsmaker making the right type of news.

Ko continues to tinker with her game, recently opening up on the amicable split with Sean Foley, but she’s rarely been happier.

Due to marry her fiance Chung Jun in the off-season, Ko appears more relaxed than she ever has been, and having led the scoring average, strokes-gained-total and been in the top three for scrambling and putting, she may find herself in this column in 12 months time.

3. Ashleigh Buhai

When Ashleigh Buhai won the 2022 Women’s Open at Muirfield in August, she made history by becoming the first (modern-day) South African player to win the event since Alison Sheard in 1979, and only the second female major champion after Sally Little won two at either end of the 1980s.

A noted amateur, Buhai has taken her time winning tournaments, her second victory coming four years after the Catalonia Ladies Masters, whilst her win at her home Open came in 2018, seven years later.

None of those events were particularly close, with a winning margin of at least two, so as she opened up a five-shot lead (courtesy of a 65/64 blitz) going into Sunday, signs looked promising, as did her Open record — a tied-5th and 11th being her two best major finishes in 43 outings.

Three ahead with a handful of holes to play, including the gettable par-5 17th, the engraver was ready to start his job, until a disastrous treble-bogey on the 15th.

Opens are never meant to be easy and when the 33-year-old lost that substantial lead, she faced the prospect of a playoff against In-Gee Chun, a three-time major winner who just two months prior had won the Women’s PGA from two former major champions.

It looked a tough task for the pre-event 200/1 chance against one of the more fancied players, but in an epic battle that went to the fourth extra hole, the less-fancied player proved far the hardiest.

Both had chances to win the decider, and as they approached the 18th yet again, both looked fatigued.

In-Gee found her tee shot drift off the fairway into a bunker, meaning she had to chip out, hit a long hybrid shot and attempt a difficult par save, whilst her opponent’s approach looked to have found one of those golf lies in the back half of an island bunker to the right of the green, facing what appeared to be a much tougher par save.

With In-Gee 15 feet short of the pin, Buhai needed to get closer to the pin and put the onus on the Korean. Under the most extreme pressure, Buhai created a chip shot of beauty, landing perfectly on the green and rolling out to around two feet. In-Gee missed her putt, the South African couldn’t, announcing the victory as “life-changing.”

Not only was the exhausting effort worthy of being a news headline, but the antics of her husband, David, were also worthy of note. Usually caddying for Jeongeun Lee6, he’d clearly had a bit too much of the local brew and couldn’t quite hide either his nerves or delight as the play-off ended in victory for his better half. It would not be another wait for her next title, and just four months later, Buhai ended her year with a victory at the ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open, coming from one behind another former major winner in Jiyai Shin, who missed a five-footer to tie. This time, Dave had to be a tad quieter — he was on the bag.

4. Tom Kim

In a year that was preoccupied with talk of how much money players were getting or needed, golf needed a lift.

There were the heroic social media stances taken by the likes of Max Homa and Joel Dahmen, both among many that provided a chuckle of three, but on the course, nobody made more of an impact than Joohyung Kim, for whom typists will forever be grateful is better known as Tom.

Through a convoluted qualifying path that included a third place at the Scottish Open, Kim was granted Special Temporary Membership to the PGA Tour and immediately secured his card with a seventh at the Rocket Mortgage Classic after a final round 63. All that after having to birdie his 36th hole to make the cut.

“It means everything,” he said after gaining his license for 2022/23. “Every day I’ve played golf, I’ve thought about playing on the PGA Tour. It was nothing else.”

Already the youngest player inside the OWGR top-50, a week later, the 20-year-old became the only winner of a PGA Tour event that had started their tournament with a quadruple bogey, eventually firing a final round 61 to earn a stunning five-shot victory.

The first two FedEx events didn’t quite match that standard, with a lowly effort at the BMW meaning he missed the Tour Championship.

However, in a mix of established stars, Kim shone out at the Presidents Cup.

Golf Digest tells the tale of the per-tournament press conference:

“When a reporter asked him if he had taken any inspiration from Y.E. Yang’s win over Tiger Woods at the 2009 PGA Championship, and whether that formula of taking down a juggernaut might have echoes in the International Team’s monumental task of beating the Americans.

“Kim took the air out of that narrative quickly—he said he was a Tiger fan growing up and didn’t want Yang to win. Later, he added that even as a seven-year-old, he was disappointed in Yang’s win because he wanted to be the first Korean to win a major.”

Kim may have gone 2-3-0 in the team event, but in winning a foursome (against Scottie and Sam Burns) and one fourball (versus Patrick Cantlay and Xander), he showed that golf can be fun!

Kim could not have started the 2022/23 wrap-around season any stronger, with a comfortable three-shot victory at the Shriners, easily holding off course specialist Cantlay, who simply tried too hard to catch the leader. In doing so, Kim became the first winner since Tiger to win two PGA events before the age of 21.

Subsequent efforts include a 25th at the Zozo, 11th at the CJ Cup and a year-ending fourth place in Japan before taking finishing 10th at the Hero World Challenge, where he co-led after the first round and ‘officially’ met his hero Tiger Woods.

Kim’s ascendancy to the top 15 in the world is no fluke.

He won the Asian Tour Order of Merit before immediately making an impact at the highest level, his approach stats are as good as anyone out there, he openly loves the game, and he’s nicknamed after children’s cartoon hero Thomas The Tank Engine.

In a year when many of the best-known golfers shed fans by the bucket load, Tom Kim is the perfect antidote.

5. Matt Fitzpatrick

Until this year, Matt Fitzpatrick had recorded only one top-10 in 23 attempts at a major.

Whilst the 28-year-old had won seven European Tour events, he had never won on the PGA Tour, with many observers, and Fitz himself, acknowledging his lack of length was an issue. Those runner-up finishes at Bay Hill at this year’s Wells Fargo were no surprise given his class, but there was something just missing.

And then it all came right.

PGA tour season over for this year. A season I could only dream of. So many positives to take into next year, time to make a plan on how I can get better and improve on this years results!! pic.twitter.com/zsxFeXCB6e

— Matt Fitzpatrick (@MattFitz94) August 30, 2022

Having worked with coach Mike Walker and biomechanistic Sasho Mackenzie, Fitz started to see results.

Working on a method known as The Stack, the figures tell it all, with Fitz’s average club head speed on the PGA Tour halfway through the 2022 season increasing by over five mph compared to 2019, and his ‘off-the-tee ranking improving to 10th, compared to 59th just three years ago.

The season had already seen the Englishman finish tied-14th at The Masters, T2 at Wells Fargo and T5 at the USPGA, so he was in as good a shape as ever when coming to the U.S Open at Brookline.

Starting alongside another tee-to-green superstar, Will Zalatoris, the two PGA maidens stood on the first tee, hoping to hold off a host of challengers, including the daunting trio of Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and world number one Scottie Scheffler.

Despite several putts just missing by millimetres and an eagle try at #8, Fitz stubbornly refused to go away, finding himself in the sole lead when Scheffler started unravelling just after the turn.

On the same hole that Scheffler had just three-putted – the 11th – Fitz watched Zalatoris drain one and then miss a two-putt par from 15 feet, giving his playing partner a two-shot lead. That’s huge at a major but thoughts turned to the fate of Mito Pereira at Southern Hills.

Fitz then knocked in a 60-footer monster on 13 and then watched the leader save par from 15 feet, whilst, at the 15th, he again holes for birdie whilst WillyZ records his second bogey in four holes.

Now chasing, Zalatoris made no mistake knocking in a short one at 16 and was now just one behind coming to the pressure holes, and it was set up nicely at 17, where both players made par. Down to the 72nd.

On the deciding hole, and one shot behind, Zalatoris crashed one down the fairway whilst, defending his narrow lead, Fitz pulled a three-wood into the left-hand island bunker.

There was very little room in front of the leader’s ball, and any mis-shot might have seen the ball hit the large tuft of grass, sending the ball anywhere. Another possibility was being short and facing a tough up-and-down from the bunker in front of the green.

Fitz and caddie Billy Foster did not mess around. In contrast to the lopper needing to tell his charge to ‘get on with it’, as he did at Augusta in April, Fitz took control and hit a shot equal to the much-replayed iron of Sandy Lyle’s famous bunker shot on the 72nd hole of the 1988 Masters.

Fitz second ended around 20 feet from the flag, a couple of feet ahead of his playing partner, and now the only other that could stop a play-off between either of the leaders and Scheffler, safe in the house at 5-under.

The leader cozied the ball to the hole, parred out and watched as Zalatoris, already twice a major runner-up, missed the birdie putt by an inch.

Not only had the Englishman finally got the PGA Tour monkey off his back, but he did it in the utmost style, ranking first in tee-to-green with an astonishing 16-plus strokes gained, as well as leading the around-the-green figures.

Fitz went on to make 16th at the Tour Championship, run up in Italy, and end his year looking as if the season had taken its toll, but still finishing 5th.

On the PGA Tour for 2021/2, Fitz ranked 10th off-the-tee, seventh in tee-to-green and around-the-green, 22nd in putting and second overall. On the DPWT, he ranked 21st for driving distance, an improvement of over 100 places from the previous season, and third for stroke average.

Fitz has always been there, but this time he has arrived. And that makes news in the golf world.

Notable mentions

Everyone will have their own view on the newsmakers of 2022.

Of course, having dominated golf news for much of the first half of the year, Greg Norman, LIV CEO, might be a choice. The mouthpiece of the Saudi-backed tour has got himself in the news with an awful lot of rhetoric and has twice been rumored to be on the verge of being replaced.

Then there is Phil Mickelson, who went from being the dominant force on the Champions Tour to hiding away for a couple of months. Having openly admitted his “obnoxious greed”, he became the most polarising figure in the game, accepting a huge amount of money from a group he had previously called “scary motherf**kers.”

On a good note, Rory McIlroy finally became the dominant player, finishing number one on both sides of the Atlantic. He won three events, should have won at least three more, and went home empty-handed from St. Andrews, an Open Championship that was there for him to win.

As a celebrated opponent of LIV, McIlroy became the mouthpiece for the PGA and DPWT players, although that wasn’t always welcomed by all.

Finally, as it was getting quiet, and few thought we would hear about LIV until February, the Augusta National committee released a statement  saying they would welcome all the qualified players to the 2023 Masters. In attempting to “honor the tradition of bringing together a preeminent field of golfers,” they have attracted the attention of the 9/11 survivors’ group, in the same way, LIV Golf did in June.

Whatever your view, there is one thing for sure. Golf is making news.

Happy Holidays, WRXers!