Top 10 PGA Tour storylines in 2017

With the SBS Tournament of Champions complete, the 2017 PGA Tour season is underway. The Sony Open in Hawaii will be the first full field event and after that, the best golfers in the world will be on the mainland.

So, what are the important storylines to follow?

How important is Phil Mickelson’s attempt to win the grand slam? What about Rory McIlroy’s? What should we watch for from Tiger Woods, a man who’s won the grand slam three times over?

Chances are that we’ll see a first time major winner this year. Which golfers are most likely to do that?

What are the main storylines to follow from the PGA Tour in 2017?

1. Phil Mickelson’s continued quest for the career Grand Slam

The question around Mickelson has been the same since he the British Open in 2013. Can he finally break through and win the U.S. Open, his national championship?

It’s hard to forecast his chances this year. Aside from the 2008 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links and the 2011 U.S. Amateur, Wisconsin’s Erin Hills hasn’t hosted any championship golf.

A win at the U.S. Open would be historic for Mickelson, beyond just the career slam.

Lefty will turn 47 on June 16, which will be the second day of the U.S. Open. A win in any major would make Mickelson the second oldest major champion ever, behind Julius Boros, who was 48 years, four months, and 12 days old when he won the 1968 PGA Championship. A win at the U.S. Open would make Mickelson the oldest champion of that specific major by nearly two full years.

Mickelson has six runner-up finishes at the U.S. Open. Unfortunately, he hasn’t seriously contended since posting his last runner-up in 2013.

It’s certainly going to be an uphill climb.

2. Can Rory McIlroy regain the No. 1 ranking?

Of course, Mickelson is not the only man who enters 2017 one major short of a career grand slam. If McIlroy pulls off a win at the Masters, he’ll do the same thing.

But McIlroy’s quest for the green jacket has a sense of inevitability to it. Nothing is ever guaranteed, but he’ll be 28 in May. Realistically, McIlroy has the better part of two decades to win the Masters.

Therefore, the intrigue around McIlroy in 2017 isn’t so centered on Augusta, but his season as a whole.

While he won the Irish Open in May, much of 2016 was quiet for McIlroy, at least for his standards. But the former world No. 1 closed with a bang.

He won two events in the FedEx Cup Playoffs, including the Tour Championship. That placed McIlroy atop the FedEx Cup standings at the end of the year. McIlroy then turned his attention to the Ryder Cup.

He was the clear leader of the losing European team. McIlroy earned three points and while he ultimately lost his singles match to Patrick Reed, it was clear that regardless of what he’d said in the past, the Ryder Cup meant a great deal to him.

How will McIlroy carry that momentum into 2017? McIlroy has a level of talent that few golfers can reach. If he can find that consistently and show us what we saw at the end of 2016, this season will be a very good one for him.

Of course, McIlroy’s quest for the career slam isn’t irrelevant. Should he win the Masters, he’d join a very exclusive list. The only players to have the career grand slam are Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods, who will be back in action in 2017.

3. Return of Tiger Woods

Like it or not, the return of Tiger is going to be a big storyline this year, at least in the early part of the season.

Between the PGA and European Tours, Woods is scheduled to play in five tournaments before the end of February. In those tournaments, it will be important to monitor two things.

One, how does he play? Woods hasn’t won a tournament since 2013, made a combined 18 starts in 2014 and 2015, and zero in 2016. There’s still time for him to get to the top of the golf world, but Tiger’s career does have an approaching expiration date. So, if he’s going to get back to prominence, it will be important to see how Woods handles the early season.

Two, will he remain healthy? Injuries have been an issue for Tiger ever since his 2008 U.S. Open triumph. He’s had a hard time staying on the course for more than a few weeks at a time. Playing four tournaments in five weeks will be a good test.

From that, we may get a good sense of what we’ll see from Tiger through the spring and summer.

4. How does Jordan Spieth bounce back?

By most golfer’s standards, Jordan Spieth had a fantastic 2016 season. He won two events, made the cut at every major, tied for 13th in one major and tied for second in another.

But Spieth is not like most golfers. In the previous season, Spieth won five tournaments, two majors, and gave the grand slam a serious run.

A tie for second at a major is always good — but not for Spieth, who failed to win a second straight Green Jacket because of a monumental collapse.

https://twitter.com/CauldronICYMI/status/719285587837108225?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Spieth’s 2.5 points did help the Americans regain the Ryder Cup. But for the most part, he rode backseat to teammate Patrick Reed. During the Sunday singles session, Spieth was one of the few American blemishes, losing 3&2 to Henrik Stenson.

Is Spieth a transcendent player? Or, is he simply a very good player who had a fantastic year in 2015? The 2017 season will go a long way in answering that.

5. How does Dustin Johnson follow 2016’s breakthrough?

DJ was perhaps 2016’s ultimate breakthrough. Thanks to a terrible ruling and worse application by the USGA, it seemed as though the 2016 U.S. Open would be another in a long line of major failures for the uber talented golfer.

But Johnson slammed the door on that thought.

So, what does he do now?

Johnson has been one of the best golfers in the world for quite some time. He’s dealt with struggles on and off the course and because of that, it sometimes feels like he’s older than he actually is.

The talent is certainly there for Johnson to dominate for a while.

The major championship monkey is off of his back now. That — along with having a young family — could lead to a more relaxed Johnson, which would theoretically make him less of a threat on the course. But now that that barrier has been crossed, it can also open the door.

In reality, DJ is only 32. As a point of reference, Mickelson was 33 when he broke through at the 2004 Masters for his first major. To date, Mickelson has six major championships. He also won a major in both 2005 and 2006 after breaking through. Johnson has the ability to follow that route. But will he?

6. Which golfer will win his first major?

Of course, 2016 wasn’t only a major breakthrough for Johnson. He, along with Danny Willett, Henrik Stenson, and Jimmy Walker all won their first majors.

Odds are good that at least one of 2017’s major champions will be a first time winner.

Since 1980, only one season (2000) has been completed without someone winning his first major.

So, who will it be this year?

Half of the players currently in the top-20 — Hideki Matsuyama, Patrick Reed, Alex Noren, Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler, Sergio Garcia, Paul Casey, Brooks Koepka, Branden Grace, and Russell Knox — have yet to win a major.

So, the possibilities are certainly vast.

7. Is Justin Thomas golf’s next star?

Thomas picked up a win at SBS Tournament of Champions, the unofficial start of the 2017 PGA Tour season. His victory put Thomas in elite company over the last decade.

The least successful golfer of that group is Reed, who’s won five times. Spieth and McIlroy are both multiple time major winners.

So, Thomas certainly has the early track record to be a star. But will he do it?

The guy won’t even turn 24 until late April. So, time in certainly on Thomas’ side. But he’s one of the hottest golfers in the world now. The 2017 season is certainly set up to be a big one for Thomas. He’s a golfer to keep an eye on throughout the year.

8. Can Hideki Matsuyama become Asia’s first star men’s golfer?

The soon to be 25-year-old from Japan is trending in the right direction. He’s won four of his last six starts and has been pretty darn solid in his other tournaments.

Golf has become an increasingly global game. But while the continent of Asia has had its share of superstar female golfers and plenty of good men’s players, we’ve yet to see a superstar male golfer from that part of the world.

Matsuyama can be the man to change that.

If he does, who knows what kind of influence he can have? Think about how much Greg Normal impacted Australian golf. Think about Gary Player’s influence in South America.

Could Matsuyama be that guy in Japan, or even the rest of Europe? His game certainly tells us that its possible.

9. Can the Presidents Cup become an elite event?

It’s an odd numbered year, so we’re not going to see any exciting Ryder Cup action in the fall. But we will see a Presidents Cup, which may be tell us a great deal about the future of the event.

Right now, the Presidents Cup falls well short of the Ryder Cup. It doesn’t have anywhere near the history but more importantly, the event just has an exhibition feel to it. It’s been contested 11 times, with the Americans holding a 9-1-1 lead.

But there was a time when the Ryder Cup wasn’t an especially competitive tournament, either. The Americans were 21-3-1 in the first 25 Ryder Cups. In 1983 — the third event to include all of Europe — the United States pulled out a tough 14.5-13.5 victory. Two years later, Europe won. Two years after that, Europe won on American soil for the first time. Since that 1985 event, Europe is 10-5-1.

Why does that matter here?

The 2015 Presidents Cup was the first truly competitive event since the 2003 tie. For the first time in more than a decade, the Sunday singles matches were more than a glorified victory march for the Americans. The United States won, but by a narrow 15.5-14.5 margin.

Can that event trigger something for the International team? Or, will it just be an outlier as an usually close tournament in an event otherwise dominated by the American golfers?

We’ll find out in the fall. But with guys like Matsuyama, Jason Day, and Adam Scott leading the way, the International team has an abundance of talent to turn the tides.

10. What does the season have in store for Jason Day?

Of course, no look ahead to the PGA Tour season would be complete without looking at Day, the No. 1 ranked player in the world.

Day didn’t win a major in 2016, but won three elite field events — The Arnold Palmer Invitaitional, the WGC-Dell Match Play, and The Players Championship.

With the possible exceptions of McIlroy and Johnson, no golfer in the world is at Day’s level when he’s on. The Australian has the talent to not only hold his spot as the No.1 ranked player in the world, but could have a year similar (or better) to what Spieth did in 2015.

He’s just that good. If everything lines up right, the 2017 season can belong to Day.