The highest compliment to Brooks Koepka is that assertions which would be dismissed as false bravado from anyone else are accepted as stone-cold truth when they come from him. This was illustrated at the 2019 PGA Championship at Bethpage Black, where Koepka would ultimately claim his fourth major title. When questioned about his stance that majors were actually easier to win—a notion that flew in the face of golf’s conventional wisdom—Koepka didn’t hesitate.
“There’s 156 [players] in the field, so you figure at least 80 of them I’m just going to beat,” Koepka said. “You figure about half of them won’t play well from there, so you’re down to about maybe 35. And then from 35, some of them just—pressure is going to get to them. It only leaves you with a few more, and you’ve just got to beat those guys.”
The numbers have vindicated Koepka’s methodology, and the six years since have only strengthened his case. The irony, though, lies in the source of his success—he was absolutely right, but for entirely different reasons than he articulated.
The PGA Championship, which will be played next week at Quail Hollow, once relished its reputation for producing the occasional underdog champion—simultaneously its most endearing quality and the source of its black sheep status among golf’s majors. But that characterization has become outdated; for nearly a decade and a half, the Wanamaker Trophy has been hoisted almost exclusively by the game’s elite talents. The lone exception was Phil Mickelson, who ranked 115th in the Official World Golf Ranking before his age-defying triumph at Kiawah Island—and even this demands an asterisk given Mickelson’s Hall-of-Fame pedigree.
What’s particularly striking is that this phenomenon extends far beyond the PGA Championship. Golf has entered an era where its crown jewel tournaments have become the exclusive domain of its marquee performers. Analyzing major championship victors from 1995 to the present reveals a startling pattern: The average world ranking of winners across all four majors has plummeted to historic lows. When this 30-year span is dissected into decade-long segments—utilizing Official World Golf Ranking data from 1995-2022 and Data Golf’s World Ranking metrics during the LIV Golf era—the numbers tell an unmistakable story. With the average world rank of champions behind each major, the downward trajectory becomes impossible to ignore. (The averages for 2015-2025 include the 2025 Masters.):
1995-2004: Masters, 13.1; PGA , 36.3; U.S. Open, 23.6; Open Championship, 74.4 2005-2014: Masters, 23.2; PGA, 26.5; U.S. Open, 30.2; Open Championship, 27.7 2015-2025: Masters, 8.3, PGA, 25.4; U.S. Open, 17.1; Open Championship, 13.7
In the past 13 years, only two players outside the top 40 in world rankings have captured major championships—Mickelson’s 2021 victory and Jimmy Walker (No. 48) at the 2016 PGA Championship. Even expanding the criteria to include those outside the top 30 adds just three more names to this exclusive list: Shane Lowry (No. 33) at the 2019 Open Championship, Koepka (No. 38) at the 2023 PGA and Wyndham Clark (No. 32) at the 2023 U.S. Open. These numbers become staggering when juxtaposed against previous eras—the decade from 2005 to 2014 featured 10 champions ranked beyond the top 40, while the 1995-2004 period produced 12 such winners.
Moreover, those earlier era outsiders weren’t simply established players experiencing ranking fluctuations—they were genuine longshots. Between 1995 and 2014, 12 players conquered majors while ranked 69th or worse globally, including several whose triumphs defined the phrase “against all odds”: Y.E. Yang (No. 110) toppling Tiger Woods; Darren Clarke (No. 111) fulfilling his lifelong dream at Royal St. George’s; Paul Lawrie (No. 159) capitalizing on Jean van de Velde’s collapse at Carnoustie; Shaun Micheel (No. 169) emerging from obscurity at Oak Hill; and perhaps most remarkably, Ben Curtis (No. 369) capturing the claret jug as a complete unknown.
This seismic shift extends beyond just those hoisting trophies on Sunday evening. The leaderboard’s upper echelon has undergone an equally dramatic transformation, with the world ranking averages of top-three finishers across all majors revealing a consolidation of elite talent:
1995-2004: Masters, 17.9; PGA, 42.3; U.S. Open, 29.9; Open Championship, 59.2 2005-2014: Masters, 31.8; PGA, 36.2; U.S. Open, 72.3; Open Championship, 77.2 2015-2025: Masters, 16.8; PGA, 30.8; U.S. Open, 18.9; Open Championship, 22.5
It’s no coincidence the Masters boasts the lowest world ranking average among champions—a consequence of its curated, invitation-only field that excludes lesser-known players. What’s perplexing, however, is the Open Championship’s position in this hierarchy, given that links golf’s demands typically reward seasoned veterans who have accumulated years of knowledge navigating coastal winds and undulating fairways.
The question that demands answering is: What shift has transformed major championships from occasional launchpads for underdogs into showcases for the game’s best?
Sam Greenwood
Conventional wisdom suggests several explanations. Professional golf’s talent pool has undeniably deepened, with more phenomenal players competing than ever before. Equipment technology has supposedly democratized the game, theoretically narrowing the gap between extraordinary and the very good players. Yet these beliefs contradict the statistical evidence—if the field were truly leveling, we’d expect more surprises at majors, not fewer. Another theory indicts the contrast between major championship setups and regular tour events. However, this explanation falters when we consider that—with the exception of Augusta National—venues rotate annually, each presenting their own challenges that should create more variables, not fewer.
But two unmistakable patterns emerge from the data. First, today’s major champions are demonstrably younger than their predecessors
1995-2004: Masters, 32.9; PGA, 32.6; U.S. Open, 32.4; Open Championship, 32.0 2005-2014: Masters, 32.7; PGA, 29.5; U.S. Open, 30.2; Open Championship, 34.7 2015-2025: Masters, 29.8; PGA, 31.0; U.S. Open, 28.1; Open Championship, 31.9
The PGA Championship’s latest average carries an asterisk thanks to Mickelson; remove that outlie and the average winner’s age drops to 28.8 years—reflecting a tournament that has increasingly become the domain of golf’s rising stars rather than its established veterans. That the Open Championship has maintained its traditional age profile stands as testament to the aforementioned emphasis on course management, tactical wisdom, and experience in links golf.
This drop in champions’ ages correlates with the second trend, which is the sport’s fundamental shift toward driving optimization. While comprehensive strokes-gained analytics only extend back two decades, the evidence has become impossible to ignore—players who struggle off the tee (not merely in raw distance, but in their holistic strokes-gained driving performance relative to the field) have virtually disappeared from major championship leaderboards. Dr. Alex Ehlert, a sports scientist and researcher in North Carolina, demonstrates with precision how both average and minimum swing speeds have steadily escalated throughout the professional ranks over 20 consecutive years.
I’ve recently been interested in the minimum speed where golfers are still successful. The figures below provide an example for golfers that 1) gained strokes on average and 2) were top 25 in SG Total.
A thread 🧵 pic.twitter.com/LwJC3XDiqO
— Alex Ehlert, PhD (@AlexMEhlert) February 22, 2025
His findings present an unassailable conclusion: In today’s power-dominated landscape, those unable to generate exceptional clubhead speed find themselves facing nearly insurmountable disadvantages. And often—John Daly aside—golf’s underdogs tend to be shorter hitters.
Not that the game tends to mind. Sure, the soul of sport lies in its unpredictability—that anyone might triumph on any given day. Yet professional golf has developed a pathological aversion to underdogs. Unlike other major sports that celebrate their Cinderella stories, golf’s power structure—its governing bodies, broadcast partners, and even its audience—actively resists narratives featuring journeymen or rank-and-file professionals, especially for its biggest events. Instead, the collective machinery demands for predictable dominance by stars. It’s a fascinating paradox—a game built on meritocratic ideals has transformed into perhaps sports’ most stratified competition.
Quail Hollow stands as perhaps the most forbidding fortress against golf’s dreamers, its sprawling layout rewarding raw power and punishing those lacking it—precisely why Rory McIlroy has conquered this terrain four times. While simple math insists that golf’s rigid hierarchy must eventually crack under an underdog’s assault, the convergence of this PGA Championship on this specific track virtually guarantees that it won’t happen here. Koepka’s clinical assessment has proven prophetic: the modern major championship functions less as competition and more as filtration system, systematically eliminating all but golf’s true aristocracy.
Golf Digest senior writer Joel Beall’s debut book, Playing Dirty: Rediscovering Golf’s Soul in Scotland in an Age of Sportswashing and Civil War, is on sale now at BackNinePress and all major bookstores.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
