Grand Slam (golf)
The Grand Slam in professional golf is winning all of golf's major championships in the same calendar year. Variations include a Career Grand Slam: winning all of the major tournaments within a player's career and the Tiger Slam: winning four consecutive major titles but not in the same calendar year (named after Tiger Woods who was the first and so-far only player to accomplish the feat). Men's golf. The Grand Slam in men's golf is an unofficial term for winning all four major championships in the same year. In the modern era , the Grand Slam requires victories in four tournaments in a single calendar year (listed in current playing order): Prior to the creation of the Masters Tournament, the national amateur championships of the U.S. and the UK were considered major championships. During that earlier era, the Grand Slam comprised consecutive victories at the United States Amateur Championship, The Amateur Championship (British Amateur) along with the U.S. Open and the Open Championship. Only Bobby Jones completed a Grand Slam, in 1930. No man has ever achieved a modern era Grand Slam. The term "Grand Slam" was first applied to Bobby Jones' achievement  of winning the four major golf events of 1930: The Open Championship, the U.S. Open, the U.S. Amateur and the British Amateur. When Jones won all four, the sports world searched for ways to capture the magnitude of his accomplishment. Up to that time, there was no term for such a feat because no one had thought it possible. The "Atlanta Journal"s O. B. Keeler dubbed it the "Grand Slam," borrowing a bridge term. George Trevor of the "New York Sun" wrote that Jones had "stormed the impregnable quadrilateral of golf." Keeler would later write the words that would forever  be linked to one of the greatest individual accomplishments in the history of sports: This victory, the fourth major title in the same season and in the space of four months, had now and for all time entrenched Bobby Jones safely within the 'Impregnable Quadrilateral of Golf,' that granite fortress that he alone could take by escalade, and that others may attack in vain, forever. The modern definition could not be applied until at least 1934, when the Masters was founded, and still carried little weight in 1953 when Ben Hogan won the Masters, U.S. Open, and Open Championship. That  year, it was impossible to win all four as the PGA Championship preceded and overlapped with the Open Championship; the PGA's 36-hole match play semifinals and finals near Detroit were the same days as the mandatory 36-hole qualifier at Carnoustie in Scotland for the Open Championship; the only way to compete in both events was to lose an early match at the PGA. Hogan is the only player to have won the Masters, U.S. Open, and Open Championship in the same calendar year. In 1960, Arnold Palmer won the Masters in April and U.S. Open in June . According to his autobiography, "A Golfer's Life", he and his friend Bob Drum (of the Pittsburgh Press), while on the trans-Atlantic flight to The Open Championship at St Andrews, came up with the idea that adding it and the PGA Championship titles that July would constitute a modern Grand Slam. Drum spread the notion among the gathered media and it caught on. Two years earlier, the PGA had changed to stroke play, and it started to be held two weeks after the Open Championship in 1960. Scheduling problems continued through the 1960s as the last two majors were  held in successive weeks in July on five occasions. The PGA was played in August in 1965 but returned to July for the next three. With the formation of the Tournament Players Division in late 1968, now the PGA Tour, the PGA Championship permanently moved to August in 1969, except for the 1971 edition, held in late February to avoid the summer heat of Florida. Tiger Woods came closest to winning a modern Grand Slam by holding all four major titles at the same time. He won all four major championships consecutively — the U.S. Open, Open Championship, and PGA Championship  in 2000 and the 2001 Masters — but not in the same calendar year. This has been called the "Tiger Slam". In fact, even before Woods accomplished this, there was much debate over the definition of "Grand Slam." Fred Couples said, "I don't know how I can put it more simply . . . if he wins all four, it's a Slam." Only five golfers have won all four of golf's modern majors at any time during their careers, an achievement which is often referred to as a "Career Grand Slam": Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger  Woods. Woods and Nicklaus have won each of the four majors at least three times. The term also refers to a former tour tournament, the PGA Grand Slam of Golf, an annual off-season tournament, that was cancelled after the 2014 tournament, contested by the winners of the four major championships. Women's golf. Women's golf also has a set of majors. No woman has completed a four-major Grand Slam, but Babe Zaharias won all three majors contested in 1950 and Sandra Haynie won both majors in 1974. Seven women have completed the Career Grand Slam by winning  four different majors. There are variations in the set of four tournaments involved as the players played in different eras, and the women's tournaments defined as "majors" have varied considerably over time in a way that has not been paralleled in the men's game. The seven are Pat Bradley, Juli Inkster, Inbee Park, Annika Sörenstam, Louise Suggs, Karrie Webb, and Mickey Wright. Webb is separately recognized by the LPGA as its only "Super Career Grand Slam" winner, as she is the only one of the group to have won five different tournaments recognized as majors. Although other women 's tours, notably the Ladies European Tour (LET) and the LPGA of Japan Tour, recognize a different set of "majors", the U.S. LPGA is so dominant in global women's golf that the phrase "women's majors", without further qualification, is almost universally considered as a reference to the U.S. LPGA majors. The five current major championships are: Women's Career Grand Slam. The Evian Championship Era. Inbee Park is recognized as achieving the career Grand Slam for winning four different major championships, even though The Evian Championship had since been designated as the fifth major championship. Senior golf. Senior  (i.e., 50 and over) men's golf also has a set of majors. Like the women's majors, the senior majors are not globally recognized. However, because the U.S.-based PGA Tour Champions overwhelmingly dominates worldwide senior golf, its roster of majors is by far the most widely recognized. Unlike the mainstream men's and women's (until 2013) Grand Slams, the senior version (as recognized by PGA Tour Champions) now contains five events. In the current order of play, the five majors are: The Senior PGA is by far the oldest of the senior majors, having been founded in 1937 , decades before the establishment of PGA Tour Champions (as the Senior PGA Tour) in 1980. The other events were all founded in the 1980s—the U.S. Senior Open in 1980, the Senior Players Championship in 1983, The Senior Open in 1987, and The Tradition in 1989. This era saw senior golf became a commercial success as the first golf stars of the television era, such as Arnold Palmer and Gary Player, reached their fifties. The Senior Open, however, was not recognized as a U.S. senior major until 2003. The stability of the majors in senior golf falls somewhere between mainstream  men's golf and the LPGA: No man has ever won all of the senior majors contested in a year, even in the period between 1980 and 1982 when only two senior majors existed. Bernhard Langer is the only man to have won all five of the current senior majors in his career, having completed the career Slam by winning both the Senior PGA Championship and Senior Open Championship in 2017. Miller Barber won both of the 1980-1982 senior majors, the Senior PGA and U.S. Senior Open, during that time span, and won the inaugural Senior Players Championship in  1983. Those three tournaments would be the only senior majors until The Tradition was first played in 1989. Prior to the founding of The Tradition, Palmer and Player also completed that era's Career Senior Grand Slam. However, neither Barber, Palmer, nor Player would ever win The Tradition. Jack Nicklaus is the only other player to have completed any era's Career Senior Grand Slam, doing so in his first two years on the Senior Tour. In his first year of eligibility in 1990, he won The Tradition and the Senior Players Championship. The next year, he defended his Tradition  title and went on to win the Senior PGA and U.S. Senior Open. However, he failed to defend his Senior Players title and thus missed out on a calendar-year Grand Slam. Langer and Nicklaus are the only players to have won four or more different senior majors in their careers. Although Nicklaus never won The Senior Open, that event was not recognized as a U.S. senior major until 2003, which was also the only year he played the event. Player won The Senior Open three times before 2003, when it was considered a major by the European Senior Tour  but not the circuit now known as PGA Tour Champions.