PGA: Tony Finau will miss his second-straight major; Why has the Utah golfer been struggling?

Among the favorites to win the second major of the professional golf season this year in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, are two-time reigning Masters champion Rory McIlroy, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, the red-hot Cameron Young, Spaniard Jon Rahm and swashbuckling Swede Ludvig Aberg — all players with whom Finau competed favorably against just three or four years ago.

Not that Finau has been horrible lately; He’s currently No. 76 on the FedEx Cup points list and has only missed one cut in his last nine tournaments — at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, which is a team event.

Last week, needing to win the Truist Championship at Quail Hollow in North Carolina, Finau opened with a 67 and looked like he found something to vault himself into contention. But he shot 72-71-71 to finish tied for 31st.

That was his best finish since a tie for 18th at the Valspar Championship on March 19.

In 2025, Finau had only one top-10 finish, a tie for fifth at The Genesis Invitational in February in California.

What’s wrong with Utah’s favorite golfer?

Once a media darling who was easily accessible to national and local golf reporters alike, Finau has cut down on his public appearances and interviews the last few years as his quality of play has decreased. He hasn’t talked a lot about his recent downturn, although his popularity among golf fans seems to have remained strong.

Perhaps nobody in the country has followed Finau’s career closer than Brian Taylor, host of Real Golf Radio, a long-running, nationally syndicated golf talk radio show he produces with Bob Casper, son of Hall of Fame golfer Billy Casper.

While he hasn’t spoken to Finau or watched him play or practice at all this year, partly because Finau was not in the Masters, Taylor recently agreed to offer his perspective on what is going on with the Utah sports icon. Taylor is at the PGA Championship this week and recently covered his 25th straight Masters in person.

Taylor said he believes Finau still has the desire to improve and play at the highest levels of golf. He says the motivation to win a major, and win more on tour, is still there for Finau.

“I’ve asked Tony those very questions over the last several years, and although he’s not played his best, he always says that the fire is still there, that he wants to win, that the fire still burns to be the best,” Taylor said. “He still has that self-belief. One thing about Tony, he’s never (negative). He’s an amazing optimist. He still wholeheartedly believes in himself.”

Taylor said his conversations with Finau in 2024 and 2025 carried that same theme.

“He feels like he’s right there, and that the next shot, the next round, could be the one that will click and propel him forward,” Taylor said. “I’ve always been really impressed with Tony’s optimism, and optimism is a hard thing to maintain in golf in general, but professional golf and the spotlight he plays in, it is especially tough.”

Utah’s other golfers on the PGA Tour, former BYU golfers Patrick Fishburn and Zac Blair, also did not qualify to play in the PGA Championship. This will be the first major without a Utah resident since 2015 (The Open Championship).

How multiple injuries have hampered Finau

Finau famously dislocated his left ankle during the Masters Par-3 Contest in 2018, but popped it back in place and remarkably tied for 10th place. Obviously, he recovered well because he placed fifth in the U.S. Open and ninth in The Open Championship two and three months later.

Now his right ankle is giving him trouble, and that has led to some issues with his left knee, Taylor believes. In January of 2025, Finau revealed that he had offseason knee surgery for a torn meniscus in October of 2024, and that “the rehab’s been a lot tougher process than really anything that I’ve done with my body.”

Said Taylor: “From what I understand, he’s not able to make the (necessary) moves, like the push off (and weight transfer) as well as before. He has always had this nice, compact swing, and a real powerful lower body.

“Because he’s not able to fully utilize that lower body, I think maybe there is some compensating happening with his hands, where you try to make up for it with the hands, and that just leads to some inconsistencies,” Taylor continued.

Prior to this season, the knock on Finau was that he was an excellent ball striker and hit a lot of greens in regulation, but struggled with his putting. Taylor said that Finau’s putting stats have improved this year, but that might not necessarily reflect better putting.

“Earlier this year at Pebble Beach, he was No. 1 in strokes gained putting, which is pretty amazing for the week (he placed 18th),” Taylor said. “His putting average went from No. 156 last year to No. 16 this year.”

However, Taylor surmises that he’s not hitting a lot of greens in regulation, so he has more chips near the green, which leads to closer putts, generally.

“His greens in regulation stats are really bad this year, so his ball striking off the tee and into the greens is not good,” Taylor said. “If you are missing a lot of greens, and you are getting up and down, it is going to improve your putting stats.”

Taylor likened it to rebounding your own misses in basketball. Your shooting percentages drop, but your rebounding numbers improve.

Finau finished the 2025 season ranked 60th in the FedEx Cup points list, and is slightly behind that pace this year, although his scoring average has improved a bit. He’s gone from 71.0 last year to 70.56 this year.

“My read on Tony is that he’s probably not fully healthy, and so he’s been able to practice the putting, and that is getting better, but the rest of his game is just not quite as sharp,” Taylor said. “So that’s probably the best analysis I could give on why Tony is struggling this year.”

The latest on the lawsuit hounding Finau

Golf is a sport that requires a high level of concentration and mental acuity, so there are going to be lapses and mistakes, even among the best players in the world.

Some people on the periphery have suggested that the mental anguish over a couple lawsuits filed against Finau and his family the past six years seeking compensation for loans and other services provided to the family when he was starting out in golf in 2006 have taken their toll on the father of six.

The last surviving lawsuit, filed by former University of Utah football player Molonai Hola in 2020 seeking millions for reimbursement and a percentage of Finau’s earnings, was dismissed without prejudice in January of 2025 at the request of both parties.

On Aug. 4, 2025, the same case was dismissed with prejudice by the Utah Court of Appeals, according to court documents, meaning that it is permanently closed and Hola cannot refile the same claim or lawsuit again. That action, and the fact that litigants on both sides of the dispute have declined to discuss any elements of the case with the Deseret News, suggests that a settlement with a strict non-disclosure agreement has occurred.

Whatever the case, those close to Finau say that spate of bad publicity hasn’t really been a factor in his slipping from No. 9 in the OWGR in 2021 to above 100 now. Taylor said that in his experience, Finau remains one of the most-liked and nicest players on tour both among his fellow competitors, and fans.

“I have always been impressed with Tony and his outgoing nature,” Taylor said. “He likes and wants to be liked. He has so many fans out there. I’m actually blown away by his popularity. … Tony was sort of like a co-star at first, but in the last several years, Tony has been a mega-star out there on tour. As you walk through the galleries, you’re hearing people yell for Tony as much as some of the other big name players in the same group.”

But it won’t happen this week, as McIlroy, Scheffler, Rahm and the others do their thing near Philly. Whether Finau can rebound remains to be seen. As of this week, he’s not eligible to play in next month’s U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills GC in Southampton, New York.

Final qualifying for the U.S. Open begins next week and runs through June 8 at various sites throughout the U.S., England, Canada and Japan.