US Open Golf
Most Successful Players in U.S. Open History
With his victory at Oakmont Country Club, J. J. Spaun added his name to an illustrious list of U.S. Open Champions.
Known to be the toughest Major at which to shoot low scores, the U.S. Open has broken many a dream, but it has also created legends of the sport.
Here we take a look back through the history of the golfing calendar’s third Major championship and its most successful participants.
Four Wins – Four Players
No player has ever won the U.S. Open on five separate occasions and there are four players tied at the top of our leaderboard with four wins. The earliest of these came back in the early 1900s when a Scotsman by the name of Willie Anderson crossed the Atlantic to take over the tournament, winning it in 1901, 1903, 1904 and 1905.
The other three players tied on four wins are all American, as are most of the players on our list. Bobby Jones is unique in being the only amateur golfer on the list, with the iconic co-founder of the Masters winning the U.S. Open in 1923, 1926, 1929, 1930.
Then came two of the best golfers the sport has ever seen. Ben Hogan won nine Major championships in his career, with four of those coming at the U.S. Open in 1948, 1950, 1951 and 1953. Jack Nicklaus also won four, with the 18-year gap between his first triumph in 1962 and his last in 1980 the longest in the tournament’s history.
Three Wins – Two Players
It is rare to find Tiger Woods’ name on a golf leaderboard and not see it at the top, but with three U.S. Open wins to his name he sits tied fourth on the all-time leaderboard. His most impressive victory was undoubtedly his first, where he was the only player to finish under par. Furthermore, he also finished with a score of 12-under-par, winning the tournament by 15 shots to set a new winning margin record.
Hale Irwin is the other man to have recorded three U.S. Open wins. His first came in 1974, followed up five years later with another in 1979. He would then wait another 11 years before landing his final U.S. Open victory in 1990.
Two Wins – 17 Players
A host of players have won the U.S. Open on two occasions, with 14 of the 17 on that list hailing from the United States. Alex Smith bolstered the Scottish domination in the 1900s by winning the 1906 and 1910 editions, meaning that between 1901 and 1910, six of the ten tournaments were won by Scotland.
South Africans Ernie Els and Retief Goosen are the other two foreign champions on the list. The smooth-swinging Els triumphed in 1994 and 1997, while Goosen’s only two Major victories of his career came at the 2001 and 2004 tournaments.
Of those to have won the tournament twice, only two have done it with back-to-back victories. The first of those was John McDermott who won in 1911 and 1912. Then, almost a century later, Brooks Koepka landed his two titles in 2017 and 2018.
