Golfers Who Won the PGA Championship and U.S. Open in Same Year
The U.S. Open dates to the late 19th century and the PGA Championship to the early 20th century. Since 1916 it has been possible for a golfer to win them both in the same calendar year. But how many golfers have actually pulled off that feat?
So far, only five golfers have achieved the same-year, PGA Championship-U.S. Open double. Four of the five are among the greatest golfers ever; the fifth is still playing and has made a great start to achieving all-timer status, too.
These are the golfers who won both the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship in the same year:
- Gene Sarazen, 1922: Sarazen won the U.S. Open twice and the PGA Championship three times. But he won each of them first in 1922, when he was just 20 years old. They were his second and third career wins, respectively. Sarazen remains today the youngest PGA Championship winner and third-youngest U.S. Open winner.
- Ben Hogan, 1948: When Hogan won the PGA Championship in 1946, it was his first win in a major. He won again at the 1948 PGA Championship, then added the 1948 U.S. Open. Hogan rarely played the PGA Championship after that because (for another nine years) it was match play at that time and the effects of his 1949 car crash made playing 36 holes in one day to difficult. But he went on to win three more U.S. Opens.
- Jack Nicklaus, 1980: Nicklaus was 40 years old in 1980 and coming off his first-ever winless PGA Tour season in 1979. But a newspaper article prior to the 1980 U.S. Open that declared him finished lit a spark. He won that major by two over Isao Aoki. Then Nicklaus added the 1980 PGA Championship, winning by seven over Andy Bean. They were Nicklaus' 16th and 17th major wins, respectively (he won once more in majors). They were his 69th and 70th PGA Tour wins, respectively (he won three more times after).
- Tiger Woods, 2000: It was at the 2000 U.S. Open that Woods launched what came to be called "the Tiger Slam," winning four majors in a row and holding all four major championship titles simultaneously after the 2001 Masters. At the 2000 U.S. Open, Woods' 15-stroke victory was the most dominating in major championship history. His win in the 2000 PGA Championship was his second in a row at the PGA, making Woods the first golfer in the tournament's stroke-play era to win back-to-back PGA Championships. At the PGA, Woods prevailed over Bob May in a three-hole, aggregate-score playoff.
- Brooks Koepka, 2018: Koepka won the U.S. Open back-to-back in 2017-18, and won the PGA Championship back-to-back in 2018-19, becoming the first golfer ever to win both those tournaments back-to-back. And in 2018, he won them both in the same year. In the 2018 U.S. Open, Koekpa won by one over Tommy Fleetwood; at the 2018 PGA Championship he won by two over Woods.
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