Men's professional senior golf is for players aged 50 and above. Golf differs from all other sports in having lucrative competitions for this age group. The leading senior tour is the U.S. based Champions Tour, which was established in 1980 (as the Senior PGA Tour). It has established a roster of five major championships. These events are all played over four rounds, whereas other senior tournaments are generally played over three rounds—only one other current Champions Tour event, the limited-field and season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship, is played over four rounds. A golfer's performances can be quite variable from one round to the next, so playing an extra round increases the likelihood that the senior majors will be won by leading players.
In the current order of play, the senior majors are:
The order of play has changed many times during the history of senior golf, especially since 2006:
Unlike the mainstream majors, two of the senior majors have title sponsors, and the Senior PGA Championship has a presenting sponsor whose name appears after the tournament title. Also unlike the mainstream majors, none of which falls under the direct jurisdiction of any professional tour, the Champions Tour directly operates two of its majors—The Tradition and the Senior Players Championship. The other three senior majors are operated by the same bodies that organize their mainstream counterparts—the PGA of America for the Senior PGA, The R&A for the Senior British Open, and the USGA for the U.S. Senior Open.
The Senior PGA is by far the oldest of the senior majors, having commenced in the 1930s. The other four tournaments all date from 1980 or later, having been founded in the era when senior golf became a commercial success. This occurred when the first big golf stars of the television era, men such as Arnold Palmer and Gary Player, began to reach the relevant age.
Unlike mainstream men's golf, the senior game does not have a globally agreed set of majors. The three majors recognised by the European Seniors Tour are the Senior PGA Championship and the U.S. and British Senior Opens. However, the Champions Tour is much more dominant in global senior golf than the PGA Tour is in mainstream men's golf.
The table below show the results of all the events designated as majors by the Champions Tour. As the order in which the majors were played frequently changed, they are listed in the current order of play. Winners of Senior PGA Championships played before 1980 and Senior British Opens played before 2003 are not listed here as they were not Champions Tour majors at the time nor retroactively recognized as majors. Those winners are shown in the tournaments' articles. The other three tournaments have been Champions Tour majors throughout their existence. The Senior PGA Championship was held twice in 1984 but was not held in 1983 or 1985.
Through the 2011 Senior Players Championship, there have been 124 senior majors, of which 103 have been won by American golfers and 21 by non-Americans. Thus, Americans have been considerably more dominant at this level than they have been in either regular majors or women's majors in recent decades.
Jack Nicklaus holds the record for the most senior majors won with eight. He also has the record for the number of regular majors won (18).
Nicklaus also holds the record as the only person to have won four different senior majors. At the time, this was a 'Career Grand Slam' as the Senior British Open did not become the 5th major until 2003, by which time Nicklaus had retired from senior golf. Nobody has managed to win all five different majors.
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