The Career Grand Slam in Golf, Explained

A career grand slam in golf means winning all four of the men’s professional major championships, the Masters, the PGA Championship, the U.S. Open and The Open Championship (often called the British Open), at some point during a career. The key word is “career”: the four wins can come across many years and do not need to happen in a single season.

That distinction matters, because it makes the achievement attainable but still extraordinarily rare. Through 2025, only six men have ever done it. Here is exactly what the career grand slam is, who has completed it, and why it sits alongside the toughest challenges in all of sport.

The four majors that make up the slam

Golf’s four modern professional majors are, in calendar order each year: the Masters (April), the PGA Championship (May), the U.S. Open (June) and The Open Championship (July). Each is run by a different organizing body, played on different styles of course and demands a different blend of skills, from Augusta National’s slick greens to the wind and firm turf of a British links.

To complete a career grand slam a player must win each of these four at least once. Because the tournaments reward such different games, assembling all four is far harder than dominating any single style, which is what keeps the list of achievers so short.

The six men who have done it

For most of golf history the career grand slam club had five members. That changed in April 2025, when Rory McIlroy finally won the Masters, the only major missing from his résumé, to become the sixth. The table below shows each player and the win that completed their slam.

Golfer	Career grand slam completed	Final major won
Gene Sarazen	1935	Masters
Ben Hogan	1953	The Open Championship
Gary Player	1965	U.S. Open
Jack Nicklaus	1966	The Open Championship
Tiger Woods	2000	The Open Championship
Rory McIlroy	2025	Masters

Gene Sarazen was the first, completing the set at the 1935 Masters, the tournament’s second edition. Ben Hogan followed in 1953, the only year he entered The Open, winning it at Carnoustie. Gary Player of South Africa completed his in 1965, and Jack Nicklaus in 1966, on his way to a record 18 major titles.

Tiger Woods and the “Tiger Slam”

Tiger Woods completed his career grand slam in 2000 at St Andrews, and did so at just 24, still the youngest ever to finish the set. He then took the idea to its limit: by winning the 2001 Masters he held all four major titles at the same time, spread across the 2000 and 2001 seasons. That achievement, the “Tiger Slam,” is not a single-year grand slam, because no man has won all four in one calendar year, but it is the closest anyone has come to golf’s ultimate season.

The long wait for Rory McIlroy

Rory McIlroy’s path highlights how cruel the final leg can be. He had won the U.S. Open, two PGA Championships and an Open Championship by 2014, leaving only the Masters. It then took more than a decade of near-misses at Augusta before he broke through in 2025 to become the sixth member and the first European to complete the career grand slam.

How the slam fits golf’s greatest debates

Completing the career grand slam is a shortcut into the greatest-of-all-time conversation, because it proves a player could win everywhere the sport goes. It also raises the stakes at Augusta, where a single missing green jacket can define a career; our look at the most Masters wins shows how the same tournament shapes legacies, and our guide to how to qualify for the Masters explains how players even earn a shot at that final leg.

The short version: the career grand slam is winning all four professional majors over a career, achieved by only six men through 2025, Sarazen, Hogan, Player, Nicklaus, Woods and, most recently, McIlroy in April 2025. Tiger Woods remains the youngest to do it at 24, and no golfer has ever won all four in a single calendar year.