Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, Gary Player and Gene Sarazen. Those are the five members of one of the most illustrious clubs in all of sports by capturing the career Grand Slam, winning each of golf’s four major championships.
Rory McIlroy is looking to join the group Sunday with a victory at the Masters.
Nicklaus and Woods have both won each of the four majors at least three times and Woods, of course, captured his own version of a Grand Slam, the Tiger Slam, when he won the US Open, Open Championship and PGA Championship in 2000, then won the Masters in 2001 to hold all four majors at the same time.
Bobby Jones captured his version of the career Grand Slam, which included the US Amateur, US Open, British Amateur and British Open. He won all four in 1930.
Right now, McIlroy is part of a list of 12 players who have won three of the four. McIlroy, Phil Mickelson and Jordan Spieth are the only three on that list of active golfers. Mickelson needs to win the US Open and Spieth needs to collect the PGA Championship. McIlroy has his chance Sunday at Augusta National.
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Here is a breakdown of the five men who are in the club, listed in order of when they captured the last leg of the slam. None of the five needed more than three attempts to win it all. McIlroy is on his 11th attempt this week at Augusta National.
Gene Sarazen 
E. Bacon
Sarazen was the first to capture the career Grand Slam, even back before it was labelled as such. He ended his career with seven major championships and won the 1935 Masters in his first attempt to collect the career mark.
US Open (1922), PGA Championship (1922), Open Championship (1932), Masters (1935) in first attempt.
Ben Hogan 
Bettmann
Hogan rattled off the career Slam early in his career and won nine majors in his career. The oddity here though is that he only played in the Open Championship one time, in 1953, so it was his only chance to join the club. In fact, he won the Masters, US Open and Open Championship all in 1953.
PGA Championship (1946), US Open (1948), Masters (1951), Open Championship (1953) first and only attempt.
Gary Player 
Bettmann
The Black Knight won nine majors and captured the first three legs of the career Grand Slam in three years. It took him three more attempts to capture the last, at the US Open in 1965.
Open Championship (1959), Masters (1961), PGA Championship (1962), US Open (1965) in third attempt. Previous attempts: T-8 1963 US Open, T-23 1964 US Open.
Jack Nicklaus 
R&A Championships
The man with the most major championships in history (18) took three tries to close out winning the fourth of the four majors (1966 Open Championship). That seems silly now, because no one thinks twice about that when they look at the Golden Bear’s incredible major record.
US Open (1962), Masters (1963), PGA Championship (1963), Open Championship (1966) in third attempt. Previous attempts: Runner-up 1964 Open, T-12 1965 Open.
Tiger Woods 
David Cannon
Woods is on 15 career majors and wrapped up the career Grand Slam early and in his first attempt. Again, like mentioned earlier, he and Nicklaus both have three career Grand Slams while the other three each have one.
Masters (1997), PGA Championship (1999), US Open (2000), Open Championship (2000) in first attempt.
Here are McIlroy’s statistics: US Open (2011), PGA Championship (2012), Open Championship (2014). Masters attempts: Fourth (2015), T-10 (2016), T-7 (2017), T-5 (2018), T-21 (2019), T-5 (2020), missed cut (2021), second (2022), missed cut (2023), T-22 (2024).
