Golf World’S
newSmakerS;of;the;year

it’s december at Golf World, which means it’s time for our annual tradition of selecting golf’s 25 biggest newsmakers of the year. first, we’re happy to report that 2012 was an exceptional year for news: there was luke donald’s impressive feat of winning the money titles of both the pga and european tours. yani tseng dominated women’s golf in a manner that called to mind annika sorenstam and lorena ochoa. belly putters, once thought to be a crutch for bad putters, became the weapon-of-choice for superb putters. darren clarke notched an emotional victory in the name of older golfers everywhere, and lexi thompson struck a historic blow for younger ones. golf brought barack obama and John boehner together—but drove phil mickelson and rees Jones apart. as always, there was tiger woods—hardly winning, but doing enough other things ( suffering leg injuries, firing his caddie, changing his swing) to never stray far from the headlines. but our choice for no. 1 on our list—the Golf World newsmaker of the year—was no contest. rory mcilroy lost a masters, manhandled a u.s. open, quit the pga tour and then rejoined it, fired his agent and started dating the no. 1 women’s tennis player in the world. “it was the year that changed my life,” he says in this week’s Golf World. it was also the year he was the biggest newsmaker in golf. —Geoff Russell