Xander Schauffele is looking to get into some elite company this week when the PGA Championship tees off on Thursday. Winning the PGA Championship once, one of golf’s four major championships, is a feat within itself. Winning back-to-back, well yeah, that’s elite right there.
Unfortunately, Schauffele won’t have the benefit of course knowledge this year with it at Quail Hollow Club in North Carolina. Last year, he won the tournament in Louisville at Valhalla Golf Club.
Not many have accomplished either, so there’s still a lot at stake for Schauffele, coming in as the defending PGA champion. It’s been nearly half a decade since the last back-to-back winner at the PGA Championship. Can Schauffele accomplish the significant feat this week?
Every player to win back-to-back PGA Championships
GOLFER | BACK-TO-BACK CHAMPIONSHIPS |
|---|---|
Jim Barnes | 1916, 1919 |
Gene Sarazen | 1922, 1923 |
Walter Hagen | 1924, 1925, 1926, 1927 |
Leo Diegel | 1928, 1929 |
Danny Shute | 1936, 1937 |
Tiger Woods | 1999, 2000; 2006, 2007 |
Brooks Koepka | 2018, 2019 |
It wouldn’t be an elite list if Tiger Woods wasn’t on it, right? He’s one of seven golfers to defend their PGA Championship from the previous year. And Tiger didn’t just do it once, he’s one of just two golfers to repeat multiple times. Woods won in 1999 and 2000 and again in 2007 and 2007.
The other golfer that has multiple is Walter Hagen and he won four straight. He went on a tear winning it at four different golf courses from 1924-27. He’s the only player to win four straight.
As elite as Woods is, he isn’t the most recent golfer to accomplish the feat. Brooks Koepka is the last golfer to win back-to-back PGA championships when he accomplished it in 2018 and 2019. Of course that was back when Koepka played on the PGA Tour. He’s since jumped to LIV Golf.
The most unique back-to-back winner goes to Jim Barnes. He won the inaugural PGA Championship in 1916. He won it again in 1919. That was, however, a back-to-back because the PGA Championship wasn’t held in 1917 or 1918 due to World War I.
Another fun fact is, between 1922-27, there were just two golfers who won the PGA Championship. Hagen obviously dominated for four years, but the two years before him, Gene Sarazen also won back-to-back times in 1922 and 1923.