Now we are into 2025, thoughts begin to turn to the start of the new season in April and whilst the EuroDov Cup, the season opening event and Major, is the first event of the calendar year, for many the St Andrews Open and the start of the Order of Merit is the signal the season is here.

The Order of Merit enters its 5th year in 2025 and has matured and settled into the premier event of the EuroDov Tour calendar. In 2025 16 players will compete to win the James Braid Quaich, the field boasts five Major winners and nine players who have at least one Order of Merit event win to their name and with four prize money spots and two relegation places at play every player needs to be on form to contend.

EuroDov Reporter has taken time to sit down and look at each individual player and assess their prospects ahead of 2025. So, sit back, and enjoy their reviews.

Next up is David McColgan.

McColgan’s stats are off the charts when it comes to the Order of Merit, and the Tour in general. He’s won 10 Order of Merit events in 4 season, 4 James Braid Quaich’s, 3 Harry Vardon trophy’s and 1 Inchkeith Cup.

He is unparalleled on Tour and in the Order of Merit and his dominance has only grown year on year.

Let’s start with his 10 order of Merit wins, to put that into perspective that represent one third of all events in the history of the OoM, that’s quite the haul. His best ever season was the 2022 Order of Merit when he won four events in the one season.

Let’s look at his James Braid Quaich’s, his winning margin has only grown as the competition matured with a winning margin of just 577 points in 2021; that grew to 2050 points in 2022; then 2400 points in 2023; and finally, a whopping 3050 points in 2024.

The defining factor of McColgan’s game is his consistency, its relentless at times and for many of the other players on Tour it is the thing that separates them from him. McColgan’s worst ever finish is a 9th place finish at the MCM @ Aberdour in 2023 and barring a 7th place finish in the Lochgelly-Forrester Open in 2021 he’s never finished outside the top 5. That’s 26 top 5’s in 28 appearances, and to take that to another level it’s 24 top 3’s in 28 appearances.

There are only two events on the rota that McColgan hasn’t won and those are the MCM @ Pitffirane and King’s Cup, both of which are statistically the worst events for him, as he averages a 4th place finish in both.
Let’s take a look at EuroDov Reporters prediction for McColgan’s 2025 season.

Ok, McColgan has been favourite to lift the James Braid Quaich ever since this event was conceived, so it would be easy to keep this section short and just say, “He’s favourite again!”

However, McColgan has already announced he’ll be playing a reduced schedule, something that historically damages players chances of placing high on the leaderboard. However, one of the events McColgan is missing is the aforementioned King’s Cup and the other the Lochgelly-Forrester Open. Now if we were to take his average finishing position that’d be 1800 points, he’d lose by not playing those two events, and when we look at his 2024 performance that’d simply reducing his winning margin to 1250 points.

McColgan has openly discussed his approach to the Order of Merit saying frequently, “that a top 3 finish week in week out is enough to compete at the top end of the standings, whilst winning an event is nice, sacrificing short term success for the Major win is more important.”

If McColgan was to succeed at this, and the stats say he might with him finishing top 3 86% of the time he tees it up, he’d clock up 7200 points across the season, which in 2024 and 2023 would be enough to lift the Quaich.

Of course, all that said it depends on what goes on around him, what do his competitors do, however, they’ll be playing with pressure like never before, knowing that any position above him when is playing is an advantage and placing in the points the weeks he isn’t playing is an even greater advantage.

It’ll certainly be an interesting year, and likely an exciting final round come the Tour Champs, for now though EuroDov Reporter is going to stick their neck out and say McColgan brings home the Quaich for the 5th year in a row, but with a massively reduced winning margin.