Sunday afternoon, any PGA Tour gallery. The roars tell you who’s popular before the leaderboard ever does, and this week that popularity was put to a real vote. In our flagship Essentially Golf newsletter, we asked our readers who their favorite active PGA Tour pro is. Thousands of fans answered that question, and it wasn’t close. One name grabbed nearly a third of the votes, and the other four spent the rest of the poll fighting for second place. A handful of voters also submitted their own picks, with everyone from Tommy Fleetwood to JJ Spaun and Justin Thomas receiving mentions.

5. Cameron Young

Young’s the newest name here, and the swing is doing most of the work. “Can’t get over that pause at the top of the backswing,” one fan wrote, and if you’ve watched him play, you know exactly the moment they mean.

Young pauses at the top of his backswing to avoid any sideways movement of the club. According to Golfweek, it was started when his dad, a PGA pro himself, made him do this drill on the range. The habit stuck, and even though Hideki Matsuyama does it too, Young is the pro most commonly associated with this.

Interestingly, a couple of fans lumped him in with Sam Burns as part of the same wave of guys they’re rooting for: young, hungry, and breaking through. That’s actually the story with Cameron Young. He won his first Tour title at the 2025 Wyndham Championship after seven runner-up finishes, then backed it up with wins at the 2026 Players Championship and the 2026 Cadillac Championship, pushing him to No. 3 in the world. Only a Major Championship breakthrough is left.

4. Rickie Fowler

Yes, Fowler’s last PGA Tour win was back in 2023. And yes, he has only five top tens in the last 19 starts. But if Young proves you can build a fanbase on your breakthrough year, Fowler proves you can make fans stick with you long after your breakout year. And even when things are not going your way inside the ropes. Doubt us? Hear from your fellow reader.

One person chalked it up to that: he’s “a great all-around good person” who “looks like he’s starting to get his game on track.”

Fowler, a flat-brim cap and orange Puma gear included, still pulls a crowd even in a stretch without much to show for it on the course. He’s finished fourth in this poll behind three guys who’ve combined for a stack of majors, which tells you the drought hasn’t cost him much with the people who already like him.

Curiously enough, not every Fowler comment was actually about Fowler. One voter used their pick to take a shot at someone else on this list, calling a rival “performative” and asking “is every shot supposed to go in the hole?” (you’re about to find out who that is).

3. Rory McIlroy

Now this is one person who found himself at the top of the list of the most-hated PGA Tour pros. In fact, the dig we mentioned from the Fowler fan was also aimed at McIlroy. So what makes the Ulsterman so polarizing?

Well, some see him as arrogant and as someone who likes to run his mouth. Others love him for his openness and candid nature.

And as an end result, Rory McIlroy finished a hair behind Spieth, and his support skews toward something simpler than talent: he cares about spectators. Repeatedly, unprompted, fans brought up how he treats people.

“He is a gentleman and polite with the fans too,” one wrote. “Many of the guys walk with their heads down and don’t acknowledge the fans.”

They were probably alluding to this moment from the 2026 PGA Championship.

Probably why another fan went further, calling him “a great ambassador for golf” and praising his “wonderful sportsmanship.” That’s the pattern with McIlroy’s fans: less about birdies, more about how he carries himself when things go sideways, on and off the course.

It’s worth noting McIlroy also draws the loudest jeers of anyone in this poll on the road, especially from American crowds, and his fans clearly clock that too. They just see it as a reason to like him more, not less.

2. Jordan Spieth

Spieth landed in second, and his appeal runs almost opposite to Scheffler’s. Why? Well, he’s not winning much right now, and his support has very little to do with his stats. It has everything to do with how fun he is to watch. See the comment below.

“Fun guy, nice guy, entertaining guy, gotta get going again guy!” one fan called him, which pretty much nails it.

That word, “entertaining,” showed up over and over. Now you might argue that this entertainment comes at a cost. Spieth hasn’t managed a single top ten this season, although in many tournaments, he looked like he would finish on top of the leaderboard. But Spieth’s popularity is hardly tied to it. Take the words of another fan.

They zeroed in on the unpredictability itself, saying “you just never know what you’re going to get with Spieth,” and that’s exactly the draw. Even people rooting for him to break through again did it with warmth rather than frustration, hoping a win would “get a lot of people off his back” because, in their words, he’s “just so good for the game of golf.”

Another Essentially Golf reader called him a “class act” who “has always scrambled well and is kind to players and fans alike,” adding that he’s “demonstrated time and time again” the right values.

Spieth hasn’t lifted a trophy in years, and it barely dented his popularity.

1. Scottie Scheffler

What is it about Scheffler? Four majors? 20 PGA Tour wins? Undisputed World No. 1? You can go on and on about what Scheffler has done, and you won’t be any closer to the actual point.

He is a genuine guy. What do we mean?

You can think about his Open Championship press conferences. Every question Scheffler answers carries the weight of deep thinking. Whether it’s him talking about the fleeting nature of success or about the Bryson DeChambeau rules fiasco, the World No. 1 offers thoughtful answers peppered with humor.

“Just seems to be a good guy/person, not full of himself,” one fan wrote, and that’s basically the whole pitch.

Scheffler didn’t win this poll. He ran away with it, pulling in roughly a third of the total vote and turning a five-way race into something closer to a coronation. The World No. 1 has been the best player on the planet for a while now, but garnering over 33% of total votes points to something beyond golf.

Scheffler is a family man from Texas who treats a major championship Sunday about the same way he’d treat a Tuesday range session. Another fan couldn’t resist needling him even in a compliment: “If he was a better putter he’d win 15 times a year!”

Between the calm and the dominance, it’s not hard to see why he lapped the field. When one player takes a third of the vote in a five-man field, the other four aren’t losing to bad luck. They’re losing to a guy fans genuinely can’t find anything to dislike about.

Honorable Mentions:

Besides these five, a few fans mentioned Justin Thomas as their favorite pro. It’s not hard to understand why, because JT has two majors and has been a PGA Tour mainstay as well as a pillar for Team USA at the Ryder Cup.

Similarly, some fans mentioned JJ Spaun. Clearly his Cinderella story at last year’s U.S. Open resonated with many, and some still remember the heroic putt at Oakmont. The same goes for Tommy Fleetwood, whose first PGA Tour victory at East Lake last year and whose candor have won fans over throughout the years.