With 50 worldwide wins, including two Masters victories, Bernhard Langer was a Hall of Famer well before he ever put a peg in the ground to play on the PGA Tour Champions. Still, what the German golf great has accomplished since turning 50 is its own brand of phenomenal.
In 375 senior tour starts, Langer has won a record 47 titles, including 12 majors, while posting 237 top-10 finishes (that’s 63.2 percent of all his starts). For context, the closest any “active” PGA Tour Champions member is to Langer on the all-time win list is Steve Stricker with 18.
Making Langer’s run on the 50-and-older circuit even more impressive is the longevity he’s shown, having won at least one PGA Tour Champions event every year since he started playing the tour in 2007. That’s 18 straight seasons, which not surprisingly is a record as well. Again, for context, the next closest player is Hale Irwin with 11 followed by Gil Morgan and Miller Barber, both with nine. (Incidentally, the most consecutive years with a victory on the PGA Tour is 17, set by Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.)
At age 68, however, even Langer can’t outrun Father Time. Having made 19 starts on the PGA Tour Champions in 2025, he is winless so far this season. To keep his yearly streak alive, he will need to pull out a victory in one of the two remaining events: this week’s Simmons Bank Championship or the Charles Schwab Championship from November 11-14.
It’s not like Langer, who played in his 41st and final Masters in April, has played poorly this season; he has a runner-up finish and six top-10s, including his last two starts. However, the man is 68. Once more for context, he’s not only the oldest player ever to win on the PGA Tour Champions, but the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth!!!
Langer is well aware of how challenging it is to sustain a winning level of play over such a long period of time. At the end of the 2024 season, he spoke to Golf Channel about his ability to play so well for so long.
“Well, it’s a tough thing to have in golf, as we all know, whoever competes, it’s difficult to be consistent, it’s difficult to have longevity because it’s such a fickle game,” Langer said. “If you lose part of your game, a little bit here, a little bit there, you’re gone. There’s that much competition around. So I’m very pleased and fortunate to have had 50 years basically of professional golf. And most of them are successful, so I’m happy for that.”
For Langer fans, there is room for optimism that the streak can survive. After all, last year he faced the very same situation, needing to pull out a victory in the season-finale at Phoenix Country Club. Sure enough, he did it, shooting an 18-under 266 (including a final-round 66) to win by a shot over Richard Green. Conveniently Phoenix Country Club is where this year’s Charles Schwab Championship will be held again.
Also working for Langer is the fact that both of the final two events on this year’s schedule have limited fields, with just 54 players competing this week at Pleasant Valley Country Club in Little Rock, Arkansas, and 36 in Arizona next month.
No doubt Langer is very aware of what he’s facing. He alluded to as much last year on Golf Channel when he was interviewed after his victory that extended his streak to 18.
“It was very much [a motivation], especially … I enjoy competing and being around great guys on the Champions Tour,” Langer said. “Travelling to Phoenix, I knew this was my last chance to win this year and it would stop my streak that I had going. So it meant even more, not just beating the best players out there but winning on a golf course I’d never won before and in the very last opportunity I had for the year to now have 18 in a row.”
Surely, the same holds true about trying to get to 19 in a row. The only question is whether Langer can will his way to yet another victory.
