Golf Compendium

The 2022 Masters Tournament will be the 86th time this tournament is played. The Masters Tournament is one of the four major championships of men's professional golf, and probably the most-famous golf tournament in the world for the general population. It is the first men's major played each year, and the only one of the four that always takes place at the same golf course.

The golf format called 14 Clubs is for four-person teams competing against other four-person teams. And the key to the format is right there in the name: Each quartet of golfers is only allowed 14 golf clubs. That's total — 14 clubs spread among four golfers.

Golfers sometimes use the term "finishing hole," or we sometimes hear announcers on tournament broadcasts using it: "Tiger and Phil have reached the finishing hole." And the definition? It's mostly just what it sounds like: the hole that is the finish of the round.

Performance in major championships has outsized influence over how golf fans (and history) judge professional golfers. And winning majors is the goal, but playing great in majors — posting high finishes, Top 10 finishes — is also expected of great golfers.

In golf, "lip out" refers to a putted ball that catches the edge, or lip, of the hole without falling in. The rim around the hole is also called its "lip," so a ball that catches the lip but stays out is a "lip out."

Before the World Golf Championships (WGC) arrived in the late 1990s, the Johnnie Walker World Golf Championship came on the golf scene in the early 1990s. It was played in Jamaica with a limited field of 24 golfers (based on world rankings).

Katherine Harley was an American golfer in the early 1900s. Her claim to fame is two victories, separated by six years, in the biggest golf tournament available to American women of her era: the U.S. Women's Amateur Championship.

"Tiger Slam" is a golf term that was invented in 2001 to describe an accomplishment by Tiger Woods — an accomplishment no other male golfer had ever pulled off. What did Woods do? He won four major championships in a row.

Millions of dollars — in some cases, tens of millions of dollars — are at stake in golf's major championships today. But how much was at stake in the beginning? The beginning of the PGA Championship was in 1916. How much money were the golfers playing for in that first PGA Championship? Very, very little by modern standards — but a lot by the standards of the time.