Power Rankings: Hero World Challenge

If you’re struggling to find the right holiday gift for the PGA TOUR member in your life, that never can be easy, especially if he just locked up his card for the 2025 season. But it’s an even greater challenge to match what 20 guys get to experience this week: the promise of another tournament. The spirit of competition is for a lifetime, so it truly is the gift that never stops giving. (Pro tip: Scratch-offs never disappoint.)

Joy is in the tropical air along with the victory up for grabs at the Hero World Challenge in The Bahamas. Albany in Nassau hosts for the ninth time. Nuggets on the course, perks and more are below.

Not unlike the NBA All-Star Game in which defense isn’t a priority until the fourth quarter when the game is on the line – and even that has been questionable – the primary objective of the similarly stacked Hero World Challenge isn’t to force golf’s A-listers to grind, it’s to reward them for a year done well. It’s why they’ve traveled to New Providence Island during the only month of the year without obligations attached to some sort of official capacity.

Albany is the ideal backdrop, and not only because it’s situated in paradise. For one, it’s fun. It’s the furthest from a stock par 72 among the par 72s that these guys walk in plain sight all year. There are five par 3s and five par 5s. The course tips at 7,449 yards, but in addition to the customary modulations from hole to hole and round to round, the wind also pushes and pulls in these exposed parts.

The breezes to cause pause will arrive on Friday and sustain into Saturday. All golfers go out in twosomes midday and within 100 minutes of each other, so any benefit in calmer air will be negligible. All other conditions will be seasonable; that is, the daytime high might not touch 80 degrees and passing clouds are unlikely to spit rain. There is no cut in the 72-hole stroke-play format.

Albany is blanketed with Bermudagrass. Just like any other course subject to unencumbered wind, the greens are governed to run no longer than 12 feet on the Stimpmeter. If there’s a worthy test, it’s in the targets on approach. They are just 4,500 square feet on average.

Last year’s scoring average of 69.94 is close to the bull’s-eye expectation for this week. If someone can equal Scheffler’s winning score of 20-under 268, he’ll likely prevail, and prevail outright at that as there’s never been a playoff at Albany. Despite the perennial depth of the field, the eight debutants can find some strength in the fact that two of the seven winners after the inaugural edition at Albany were first-timers on the course.

Stocking stuffers are two-fold. For one, the winner will bank $1 million of the record $5-million prize fund. For the other, all 20 in the field will tally Official World Golf Ranking points.