Amid the Highs and Lows of Pro Golf Circuit, Ryggs Johnston Relishes Return Home
In the year 2025 alone, the Libby native has golfed in at least 15 countries as he continues to strive for success in the world of pro golf
By Mike Kordenbrock
After months spent flying around the globe to compete against some of the best golfers in the world, Ryggs Johnston is happy to be home.
Home for the 25-year-old is Libby, Montana, where he grew up and first began to make a name for himself as a promising young golfer. It’s there, almost eight months after he made international headlines as the winner of the 107th Australian Open golf tournament, that Johnston is taking a little time to relax.
“Getting back was good,” he said earlier this week, of his return to Montana and Libby. “I just could feel the stress level go way down.”
In the year 2025 alone, Johnston has golfed in at least 15 countries while he plays in the DP World Tour. During a four-month stretch from February through the end of May, for example, he entered into tournaments in Bahrain, Qatar, Kenya, South Africa, Singapore, India, Turkey, Belgium and Austria. His path to Libby included flights from Dublin, Ireland to Minneapolis and then to Bozeman, where he landed and then began the six hour drive northwest.
The pro golf life isn’t quite as glamorous as some people imagine it to be, Johnston said during a recent interview at the Eagle Bend Golf Course in Bigfork before play kicked off in the Flathead Beacon Pro-Scratch. Joking that at this point flying from the Flathead Valley to the East Coast “feels like nothing,” Johnston indicated there isn’t much time to explore the various parts of the world where he finds himself of late beyond the route from the airport to the hotel to the golf course, and back again.
But although Johnston was straightforward about that component of his life these days, he wasn’t complaining.
“It’s out of your control, and in your control,” he said of the way life is on the pro circuit.
If anything, he saved his criticism for his own performance of late. The calendar year has been a bit of a struggle, he said, with his game falling short of his own standards.
“It gets tough out there on the road when you’re missing cuts,” he said. “It’s not too fun to be sitting in a hotel room on the weekend rather than playing. And losing money, but you know it’s just part of the game, and it’s part of the deal. It’s still my first year, so it’s still learning a lot every week. Luckily I got full status, so there’s plenty more tournaments to come this year.”
Johnston’s win at the Australian Open was just his second start on the DP World Tour, and came less than a month after the 2023 Arizona State grad earned full DP World Tour status for his performance in the tour’s qualifying school.
Despite how things have gone on the whole in 2025, there have been some positive glimmers of late, and Johnston said that in the last month or two he’s started to find a little bit of a better form.
At the BMW International Open in Munich, Germany, for example, he finished tied for 26th place, which was his strongest outing since a 24th place finish at the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa right after the Australian Open.
And more recently, Johnston’s talent flashed at the 153rd Open Championship in Northern Ireland where a couple weeks ago he caught fire with a 5-under 66 day to launch him into 17th place to make the cut for weekend play. But the weekend was less fortuitous for Johnston, who ultimately finished 4 strokes over par and tied for 63rd place.
Identifying a positive from the experience, Johnston said that he knows he can compete at that level of play.
“I didn’t have my best stuff for three out of the four days. So hopefully I can get another opportunity at major championships because it just makes me want more now. You always want to play against and beat the best,” he said.
The recent stop in Libby isn’t Johnston’s first trip back home since his professional breakout in Australia. To mark the occasion, the city of Libby threw Johnston a parade just a couple days after Christmas.
With Johnston perched atop a fire truck, the parade looped from the Cabinet View Golf Club parking lot down Mineral Avenue and then back to the clubhouse, as people stood on the sides of the street waving and holding signs. It was just one example of the ways in which Johnston’s hometown has continued to show him support.
He said that he regularly gets texts and other messages from people back in his hometown wishing him luck or congratulating him on his successes. And of course his caddy is one of his best friends from Libby, Jonny Cielak.
Sometimes when he’s hanging around the Cabinet View Golf Course people will ask for photos or autographs, but Johnston said that most of the time they’re people he’s known his whole life.
And of course Johnston has had his own brushes with celebrity, saying that there are still some moments where he’ll find himself in proximity to biggest names in the golf world, like sitting down for lunch next to Scottie Scheffler. It can be a cool experience to be around the golf world’s greats, but for the most part Johnston said he feels pretty comfortable about it. At the same time, he doesn’t lose sight of what it all boils down when it’s time to compete.
“They’re just other guys in the field that you’re trying to beat.”
Next up for Johnston is a trip to the Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeenshire, Scotland for the Nexo Championship, which starts on Aug. 7. The Nexo Championship will mark the start of a seven week stretch of tour play featuring stops in Denmark, England, Switzerland, Ireland and France.