When Bobby Jones reigned in men’s golf from 1923 to 1930, the US and British Amateur were considered majors, along with the US Open and the British Open. Later, after the creation of the tournament played at Augusta National, the Grand Slam adopted its current configuration: Masters, US Open, British Open and US PGA Championship. Only five players have won the four majors: Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. However, the latter is the only one of the four to have won all four titles in a row, although not in the same year, but in two consecutive seasons, a feat called “Tiger Slam”.
The Women’s Grand Slam has undergone a much more significant transformation. The five current majors are (in their order on the calendar): ANA Inspiration, US Women’s Open, KPMG Women’s PGA Championship (all three are played in the United States), Ricoh Women’s British Open and Evian Championship (France). Three other tournaments have had significant status in the past: du Maurier Classic (Canada), Titleholders Championship (until 1972) and the Women’s Western Open (suspended after 1967). Because these tournaments have been kept so far apart in time, no female player has been able to win all eight. Arguably the only one who can claim to have won a modern Grand Slam is Australia’s Karrie Webb, victorious in all five Grand Slam events (ANA, U.S., PGA, British and du Maurier) before the Evian was added to the Grand Slam list in 2013. No female player has won all five current majors.
In this new Grand Slam winners section, we look at the careers, records and highlights of the sport’s top stars, starting with the two who have won the most majors in the men’s and women’s competitions, Jack Nicklaus (18) and Patty Berg (15).
Charismatic Nicklaus
If there is a charismatic player in the history of modern golf, someone who can be considered without discussion as the greatest, it is undoubtedly Jack Nicklaus. At the age of 81, 16 years after saying goodbye to professional competition, the Golden Bear is the undisputed protagonist of one of the most fantastic sporting careers of all time. He has 18 majors to his credit and a total of 73 victories on the PGA Tour, the North American Tour, where he maintained his unbeatable reign for many years in the 60s, 70s and even 80s.
Sixteen years ago, Nicklaus chose St. Andrews and the British Open, a tournament he had won three times, to say goodbye to golf as an active player because, as he declared, “it means something special and has been a very important part” of his sporting career. The Golden Bear won at St. Andrews in 1970 and 1978. In what became the last tournament of his prolific career, his son Steve was his caddie, which made the tournament even more sentimental for the American, who could not hold back the tears as he walked the stage of the BritanicOpen for the last time.
Nicklaus’ sporting career, which has been everything in the world of golf, is unparalleled. He began playing golf as a child and won his first major tournament, the Ohio Open, when he was only 16 years old. His next great triumph was the U.S. Amateur Championship in 1959. Two years later he retained this title and won the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship.
From 1959 to 1961, the year he entered the professional circuit in his country, he won all but one of the tournaments in which he participated.
In 1962, Nicklaus won the U.S. Open after defeating his compatriot Arnold Palmer, another legend of the sport. Throughout his long and successful professional career he achieved an incredible record, which includes six editions of the Masters (1963, 1965, 1966, 1972, 1975 and 1986), five editions of the US PGA (1963, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1980), four of the US Open (1962, 1967, 1972, 1980), three of the British Open (1966, 1970, 1978) and one of the World Match Play Championship (1970). He was named best player on the PGA Tour on five occasions (1967, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1976) and was awarded the prize as the best golf player of the 20th century in 1988.
The Golden Bear entered the U.S. senior circuit in 1990 and, in this category, won two U.S. Opens (1991 and 1993) and two PGAs (1991 and 1996).
He is also one of the world’s most prestigious golf course designers through his company Golden Bear International. He received the Golf Course Designer of the Year award in 1993.
Nicklaus, who was born in Columbus, Ohio, on January 21, 1940, straddles North Palm Beach, Florida, and Carefree, Arizona, is married to Barbara and is the father of five children. Jack II, Steve, Nancy, Gary and Michael.
Although he no longer has it easy, Tiger Woods, another ‘extraterrestrial’ golf figure, is the only one who could equal Nicklaus’ sporting records. The Tiger and the Bear, two splendid beasts that have written, and still write, the history of golf.
‘Dynamite’ Berg
The U.S. Women’s LPGA Tour owes much to Patty Berg. Not in vain, Dynamite -her nickname- was one of the promoters and first president of the Professional Women’s Golfers Association of North America (LPGA) and helped popularize the sport among women thanks to her spectacular results on the course, where she led the rankings for three decades, in the 40s, 50s and 60s.
Berg can undoubtedly be considered one of the greatest golfers in the history of the sport, since, among other feats, she won the most majors, fifteen, and the second in the total number of victories, with 83, only surpassed by Kathy Whitworth, although she ‘only’ won six majors in her career.
Born on February 13, 1918 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the freckled redhead preferred playing soccer with the neighborhood kids as a child to entertaining herself with dolls. At the age of 13 she became interested in golf and in 1934, at the age of 16, she won her first major tournament, the Minneapolis City Championship.
Her first appearance on the national scene came the following year, when she played in the final of the US Women’s Amatur. In 1937 she finished second again in the prestigious competition, and in the third, in 1938, she finally triumphed.
Her great leap to international fame took place in 1937 when, while still an amateur, she won the Titleholders, the first of the fifteen majors she scored throughout her career (six times plus the aforementioned title, seven times the Western Open and once the US Women’s Open).
In 1940, after winning some twenty tournaments as an amateur, Berg became a professional golfer. During World War II, between 1942 and 1945, he served in his country’s army as a lieutenant in the Navy.
Upon her return to civilian life, Berg joined the Women’s Professional Golf Association Tour, the forerunner of the LPGA Tour. Patty helped found the LPGA in 1948 and was the first president of that professional golfers’ association. By then, she had racked up dozens of victories, including a handful of majors. In 1946 she had won the inaugural US Women’s Open. Her fourteen wins in the other two majors (Titleholders and Women’s Western Open) came between 1937 and 1958.
Patty was not considered a great hitter, but where she was devastating, pure dynamite, was in the short game.
She won three Vare Trophies for the best average score of the season in 1953, 1955 and 1956. In 1952 she set the record for the lowest female round, with 64 strokes, which would not be broken by another woman until twelve years later, in 1964, when Mickey Wright shot a round of 62.
Another curiosity is that she was the first to make a hole-in-one in the US Women’s Championship, in 1959.
She was elected three times Sportswoman of the Year (1938, 42 and 55) by the Associated Press, and her name has been in the LPGA Hall of Fame since 1951. In 1974, she was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. The LPGA established in 1978 and on an annual basis the Patty Berg Award “to the golfer who has made a major contribution to women’s golf throughout the year”.
In 1963 he received the Bob Jones Award, the highest honor bestowed by the United States Golf Association in recognition of his great work in the world of golf.
Her last victory on the Women’s Tour came in 1962, at the age of 44, but she continued to play sporadically on the LPGA Tour, even after undergoing cancer surgery in 1970.
He gradually limited his participation in tournaments, but never stopped collaborating in initiatives for the dissemination of the sport he loved so much and which had given him so much throughout his life. His activities included clinics, speeches, promotional activities, public relations and even golf lessons to young people in the area where he lived in Fort Myers, Florida.
On September 10, 2006, at the age of 88, La Dinamita died.
Leave a Reply