Can you name every player to have won a golf major since 2000?

30/11/2023 18:39

Fifty-six different players have won a golf major since 2000 – but how many of them can you name?

As of the 2023 Open Championship, 232 golfers have won one of men’s professional golf’s four professional Major championships.

While the modern accepted definition of the majors has only existed since the 1960s, victories in these tournaments have been retrospectively recognised by all major sanctioning organisations.

The Majors were originally comprised of two British events, The Open Championship and The Amateur Championship, and two American tournaments, The Open Championship and The Amateur Championship. But with the advent of the Masters Tournament in 1934 and the emergence of professional golf in the late 1940s and 1950s, the phrase “major championships” came to refer to the Masters, the US Open, the Open Championship, and the PGA Championship.

It is difficult to say when the criteria was amended to include the current four events, although many believe it was during Arnold Palmer’s incredible 1960 season.

After winning the Masters and the US Open to begin the season, Palmer stated that if he could win the Open Championship and the PGA Championship to end the season, he would complete “his own grand slam” to challenge Bobby Jones’ 1930 performance. Until that point, many American players, including Byron Nelson, considered the Western Open and the North and South Open to be two of golf’s “Majors,”, and the British PGA Matchplay Championship was as significant to British and Commonwealth pros as the PGA Championship was to Americans.

Palmer participated in The Open Championship in 1960, hoping to repeat Hogan’s achievement of winning on his first visit in 1953. Despite finishing a stroke behind the winner in his first try, Palmer returned and won the following two in 1961 and 1962.

The PGA Championship’s scheduling issues remained, but more Americans resumed competing in the 1960s, restoring the event’s prominence – and, with it, the prize money that previously made it an appealing proposition to other American players. The introduction of intercontinental jet travel aided American participation in The Open. And a conversation between Palmer and Pittsburgh golf journalist Bob Drum resulted in the contemporary Grand Slam of Golf idea coming into being.

But the question is, can you remember the winner of all 92 majors to have taken place since the turn of the century?

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