The 2026 PGA Tour season surprised for various reasons, among them the parity with 28 different men entering the winner's circle by the end of the year. After a 2025 campaign in which the top two players in the world combined for eight victories (including three major championships), 2026 saw the duo of Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy cool off a touch with just four combined wins and one major title. That opened the door for others to fill the void, and the result was a handful of players producing career years and collecting life-changing wins.
What made 2026 particularly interesting was who stepped up to claim those mantles. Aside from Cameron Young, who for a spell in the spring was the best player in the world, few of those who produced some of the best golf of their careers in 2026 were expected to be discussed among the world's best coming into the year. Young was a popular pick to make a leap to the next level of stardom after breaking through late in 2025, but many of the others who dominated headlines in 2026 came as bigger surprises.
That made it difficult to whittle down our list of players to exceed expectations in 2026, but these are our picks for the players who had the most pleasantly surprising years in golf. Unfortunately, that was not the case for everyone, as CBS Sports also broke down golf's most underwhelming players of 2026 who failed to meet high expectations. Clark picked up three wins, including a second U.S.
Open title in 2026, to double his career victories and total major titles. It was a slow burn to start the year, as he did not pick up a top 10 before his win at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson in late May, but once he got a taste of winning, there wasn't much that could slow him down. Clark backed that up with a third at the Memorial, won at Shinnecock Hills and added another signature event top five at the Travelers.
After a ho-hum July, he added another top five at the St. Jude Championship and then won the BMW Championship to put an exclamation point on his season in the FedEx Cup Playoffs. Clark has long been considered a great talent, as evidenced by his first U.S.
Open title, but he fell off the radar after that win at Los Angeles Country Club, failing to live up to expectations as one of the sport's next stars. In 2026, the spotlight was almost completely off of Clark, which perhaps played to his advantage as he produced a spectacular back half of the season. The question going into 2027 is how he handles the weight of expectations on a second go-around and if he can maintain his place among the game's elite.
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