Men's major golf championships


The men's major golf championships, commonly known as the major championships, and often referred to simply as the majors, are the most prestigious tournaments in golf. Historically, the national open and amateur championships of the United Kingdom and the United States were regarded as the majors. With the rise of professional golf in the middle of the twentieth century, the majors came to refer to the most prestigious professional tournaments.
In modern men's professional golf, there are four globally recognized major championships. Since 2019, the order of competition dates are as follows:
The majors originally consisted of two British tournaments, The Open Championship and The Amateur Championship, and two American tournaments, the U.S. Open and the U.S. Amateur. In 1930, Bobby Jones became the only man to win all four in one year, a feat which sportwriters dubbed the "Impregnable Quadrilateral" and the "Grand Slam". With the introduction of the Masters Tournament in 1934, and the rise of professional golf in the late 1940s and 1950s, the term "major championships" eventually came to describe the Masters, the U.S. Open, the Open Championship, and the PGA Championship. It is difficult to determine when the definition changed to include the current four tournaments, although many trace it to Arnold Palmer's 1960 season. After winning the Masters and the U.S. Open to start the season, he remarked that if he could win the Open Championship and PGA Championship to finish the season, he would complete "a grand slam of his own" to rival Jones's 1930 feat. Until that time, many U.S. players such as Byron Nelson also considered the Western Open and the North and South Open as two of golf's "majors", and the British PGA Matchplay Championship was as important to British and Commonwealth professionals as the PGA Championship was to Americans.
During the 1950s, the short-lived World Championship of Golf was viewed as a "major" by its competitors, as its first prize was worth almost ten times any other event in the game, and it was the first event whose finale was televised live on U.S. television. The oldest of the majors is The Open Championship, commonly referred to as the "British Open" outside the United Kingdom. Dominated by American champions in the 1920s and 1930s, the comparative explosion in the riches available on the U.S. Tour from the 1940s onwards meant that the lengthy overseas trip needed to qualify and compete in the event became increasingly prohibitive for the leading American professionals. Their regular participation dwindled after the war years. Ben Hogan entered just once in 1953 and won, but never returned. Sam Snead won in 1946 but lost money on the trip and did not return until 1962. A voyage to the Open would often clash with the PGA Championship; Hogan's 1953 Open entry came in the years after his 1949 car crash when he skipped the PGA, then a gruelling seven-day matchplay event.
Golf writer Dan Jenkins, who was often seen as the world authority on majors since he had attended more than anyone else, once noted that "the pros didn't talk much about majors back then. I think it was Herbert Warren Wind who starting using the term. He said golfers had to be judged by the major tournaments they won, but it's not like there was any set number of major tournaments."
In 1960, Arnold Palmer entered The Open Championship in an attempt to emulate Hogan's 1953 feat of winning on his first visit. Though a runner-up by a stroke in his first attempt, Palmer returned and won the next two in 1961 and 1962. Scheduling difficulties persisted with the PGA Championship, but more Americans began competing in the 1960s, restoring the event's prestige. The advent of transatlantic jet travel helped to boost American participation in The Open. A discussion between Palmer and Pittsburgh golf writer Bob Drum led to the concept of the modern Grand Slam of Golf.
In August 2017, after the previous year's edition was scheduled earlier due to golf at the 2016 Summer Olympics, the PGA of America announced that the PGA Championship would be moved to late-May beginning in 2019, in between the Masters and U.S. Open. The PGA Tour concurrently announced that it would move the Players Championship back to March the same year; as a result, the Players and the four majors will still be played across five consecutive months.

Tournaments

The following tournaments are considered Men's Major Championships:

Masters Tournament

The Masters Tournament, the season's first major championship, is the only major that is played at the same course every year, being the invitational tournament of that club. First staged in 1934 as the "Augusta National Invitation Tournament", it is the most recent men's major championship to be founded.
The Masters invites the smallest field of the majors, generally under 100 players, and is the only one of the four majors that does not use "alternates" to replace qualified players who do not enter the event. Also, its 36-hole cut is set at roughly the top 50 players and ties—the smallest of any major, though not the smallest when measured by percentage of the original field. Former champions have a lifetime invitation to compete, and also included in the field are the current champions of the major amateur championships, and most of the previous year's PGA Tour winners.
The traditions of Augusta during Tournament week, such as the Champion's Dinner, Par 3 Contest, and awarding of a green jacket to the champion, create a distinctive character for the tournament, as does the course itself, with its lack of primary rough but severely undulating fairways and greens, traditional pin placements, and punitive use of ponds and creeks on several key holes on the back nine.

PGA Championship

The PGA Championship, which since 2019 has been the year's second major, was established in 1916 and is traditionally played at a parkland club in the United States. The courses chosen tend to be as difficult as those chosen for the U.S. Open, with several, such as Baltusrol Golf Club, Medinah Country Club, Oakland Hills Country Club, Oak Hill Country Club, and Winged Foot Golf Club, having hosted both. The PGA generally does not set up the course to be as difficult as the USGA does. The PGA of America enters into a profit-sharing agreement with the host club. An exception was in 2014, when the tournament was held at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky, a club that the PGA of America fully owned at the time.
As with The Masters, previous winners of the PGA Championship have a lifetime invitation to compete. As well as inviting recent champions of the other three professional majors and leading players from the world rankings, the PGA Championship field is completed by qualifiers held among members of the PGA of America, the organization of club and teaching professionals that are separate from the members of the PGA Tour. The PGA Championship is also the only one of the four majors to invite all winners of PGA Tour events in the year preceding the tournament, as well as inviting 20 club professionals who are non-tour regulars. Amateur golfers do not normally play on the PGA Tour, and could only qualify by winning one of the other three majors, winning a PGA Tour event while playing under a sponsor's exemption, or having a high world ranking.
When the PGA Championship was held in August, it was frequently affected by the high heat and humidity that characterize the summer climate of much of the U.S., which often set it apart as a challenge from the Open Championship, an event often played in cooler and rainy weather. With the 2019 move to a May date, heat and humidity are less likely to have major effects on the competition.

U.S. Open

The third major, the U.S. Open, was first played in 1895 and is notorious for being played on difficult courses that have tight fairways, challenging greens, demanding pin positions and thick and high rough, placing a great premium on accuracy, especially with driving and approach play. Additionally, while most regular tour events are played on courses with par 72, the U.S. Open has almost never been held on a par-72 course in recent decades; the 2017 event was the first since 1992 to be played at par 72. During this time, the tournament course has occasionally been played to a par of 71 but most commonly par 70. The U.S. Open is rarely won with a score much under par.
The event is the championship of the United States Golf Association, and in having a very strict exempt qualifiers list – made up of recent major champions, professionals currently ranked high in the world rankings or on the previous year's money lists around the world, and leading amateurs from recent USGA events – about half of the 156-person field still enters the tournament through two rounds of open qualification events, mostly held in the U.S. but also in Europe and Japan. The U.S. Open has no barrier to entry for either women or junior players, as long as they are a professional or meet amateur handicap requirements. As of 2024, however, no female golfer has yet qualified for the U.S. Open, although in 2006 Michelle Wie made it to the second qualifying stage. Finally, the U.S. Open has the strictest 36-hole cut of any major championship, with only the top 60 players and ties of the 156-player field playing the final two days.
While the U.S. Open employed an 18-hole playoff for many years if players were tied after four rounds, the USGA announced that beginning in 2018 all of its future championships would implement a two-hole aggregate playoff format. A sudden-death playoff would follow if the players were still tied after the two playoff holes. This change also brought the U.S. Open more in line with both the Open and PGA Championships, which use three-hole aggregate playoffs, followed by sudden death if necessary, and most regular events as well as the Masters only have simple sudden-death playoffs. The Sunday of the Championship has also in recent years fallen on Father's Day which has lent added poignancy to winners' speeches.