By nature and by design, the PGA TOUR is perpetually in flux. Like stocks, the league’s prized assets – its players – are continually rising and falling. The parity is what drives the league forward.

Every year, new stars are found, while others fall by the wayside. In the lead-up to a new season, much energy is spent on who those next stars might be, and what’s next for the players who just broke out.

But what about the players whose performance dipped in 2025? What’s in store for them? Who might be ready to bounce back and push themselves back to the top of the ladder? Because just as easily as they fell, they can rise again.

As a large chunk of the TOUR’s top players ready themselves for their season debut at The American Express, here are five top players in prime position to bounce back.

Max Homa

Max Homa’s 2025 did not go according to plan. The six-time PGA TOUR winner made several notable changes in hopes of further progressing. Instead, he took a step back.

Homa is no stranger to adversity. He first earned his TOUR card via the 2016 Korn Ferry Tour, but made just two cuts in 17 events the next year. He made $18,008 that season, and he makes sure to call out that last $8 when he recalls it, because that mattered deeply at the time.

That was the bottom – the beginning to which this incredible reclamation project was born. But 2025 was the low point of his second act. Will 2026 be the year he gets back on track?

The former top-five player in the world returned to his trusty swing coach, Mark Blackburn, this offseason after the two spent last year apart. He hopes that will help iron out swing issues that have plagued him since the back half of 2024. He also enters the new year with more stability in his equipment, now in the second season with Cobra, and with his caddie situation, which was upended midway through last year when he parted with longtime friend Joe Greiner.

With some of those loose ends tied up and some needed time away from the game to unwind (he and his wife, Lacey, welcomed their second child in the offseason), Homa should enter 2026 with much more clarity than he did 12 months ago. That’s the recipe for a bounce-back season.

Will Zalatoris

It all comes down to health for Will Zalatoris. The talented American is a force whenever his body holds up long enough for him to display it. That’s been far from a sure thing over the last three years.

Zalatoris played 11 events on the PGA TOUR in 2025 but none after the PGA Championship in May, as he underwent his second back surgery in three years. The first surgery occurred in 2023, ending his year after just eight starts.

Zalatoris managed to play good golf between surgeries, finishing inside the FedExCup top 50 in 2024 and making nine of 11 cuts in 2025, but his ceiling is much higher than that. Zalatoris broke onto the scene emphatically in 2021 and 2022. In his rookie season, he amassed three top 10s at the four major championships, including a runner-up finish. In his second season, he did it again, carding three top 10s in the majors, including runner-ups at both the U.S. Open and PGA Championship.

He seemed destined for stardom – to become the next Scottie Scheffler before Scottie Scheffler became Scottie Scheffler.

Injuries took that away. Now Zalatoris is attempting to come back again. He’s in the field at The American Express this week, his first TOUR start and second worldwide since recovering from surgery. A reminder of his ability, Zalatoris finished 15th in his first start back at the DP World Tour’s Nedbank Challenge.

Unlike most on this list, it’s not the golf that needs to change for Zalatoris to return to the top of the sport. It’s simply his body.

Tony Finau

Was 2025 an anomaly or the start of a career decline for Tony Finau?

Finau, 36, has been one of the most steady performers on the PGA TOUR since he earned his card in 2015, but he showed the first sign of slowing down last season.

After making the TOUR Championship seven consecutive years, Finau failed to make it past the first FedExCup Playoffs event in Memphis, Tennessee. The American had career lows in top 10s (one), top 25s (five) and FedExCup positioning (66th). The most alarming part: Finau’s greatest strength abandoned him. Perennially one of the sport’s best ball-strikers, Finau lost his edge completely. He went from second in Strokes Gained: Approach in 2024 to 135th. In the process, he dropped from a top-15 player, statistically, to 130th in SG: Total. He ranked 138th in Scoring Average.

So was this the start of a broader decline, or simply a statistical outlier? That’s the question Finau will have to answer this season. As more and more golfers continue to contend well into their 30s and 40s, can Finau be the latest to amass a resurgent season?

Nick Dunlap

Can Nick Dunlap rebound after a sophomore slump? It was hardly the year Dunlap envisioned as the follow-up to his breakthrough 2024. He won twice in his rookie season, including as an amateur in an historic victory at The American Express. Yet it was a reminder of how quickly things can flip, particularly for young players still figuring out pro golf.

Dunlap struggled mightily in 2025, finishing outside the top 130 of the FedExCup and falling to 164th in the Official World Golf Ranking.

Still, Dunlap is just 22 years old, the second-youngest full-time player on the PGA TOUR behind Aldrich Potgieter. Many of Dunlap’s contemporaries from his junior days are still in college. Dunlap is a PGA TOUR winner. The Alabama native will need to figure out the driver in the new year. That was what caused the most trouble, none moreso than when he shot 90 in the first round of the Masters. He brought on a new swing coach in the offseason, Scott Hamilton, to work through those deficiencies and finished T8 in Utah during the fall in his first event with Hamilton.

Dunlap’s performance at the Sony Open is further evidence of the talent.

Dunlap gained five strokes on approach in his first round alone, more than two strokes better than the next-best performance. When he’s on, he’s incredible.

Sahith Theegala

When 2025 began, Sahith Theegala ranked 13th in the Official World Golf Ranking. He had just finished third in the TOUR Championship, helped the U.S. win the Presidents Cup in Canada a few months earlier and looked poised to take another jump in his career.

Twelve months later, Theegala ranked 120th as he teed off at the Sony Open in Hawaii, hoping he could eventually get back to that place.

The precipitous drop was largely injury related, though Theegala wasn’t playing particularly well even before he got hurt last spring. He struggled through the West Coast swing, then hurt himself during a TGL match in early March. His season fell off from there as Theegala attempted to play through the pain, withdrew from several events and eventually shut himself down for two months in the middle of the year. The result was a lost season in one of his prime years.

Can he bounce back? Unlike Zalatoris, Theegala, 28, had a ramp-up period late last year that should allow him to hit the ground running this season. The American made four cuts in five starts during the FedExCup Fall, and though he didn’t contend in any, it helped Theegala get back into the swing of things.

In the season opener in Hawaii, Theegala played his final 15 holes on Friday in 7 under to rally and make the cut on the number. He eventually finished T31 after two solid rounds on the weekend. Theegala will need more solid results to build a solid foundation. He does not have any guaranteed status yet for 2027 and will need to play his way into this season’s Signature Events.