When, in 1930, Bobby Jones won The Open Championship at Royal Liverpool, The Amateur Championship at St Andrews, the US Open at Interlachen and the US Amateur at Merion, he had won the four most prestigious golf tournaments of the year. His triumph is now described as the Grand Slam. At the time people talked of major golf tournaments, but the word was used as an adjective – the concept of a “Major” did not exist.
With prize money rising, and the social status of the professional golfer increasing, the best golfers were almost invariably pros. (Johnny Goodman, in 1933, was the last amateur to win the US Open and Jones’ 1930 Open victory was the last time that tournament was won by an amateur.) As a result, the Amateur Championship and the US Amateur were no longer considered as among the top four tournaments.
Arnold Palmer and journalist Bob Drum, travelling to the British Isles in 1960, were chatting about Jones’ Grand Slam and wondering what the modern equivalent would be. The Open and US Open remained, but what would be the other two events? Palmer suggested The Masters, as that event that year had offered the most prize money of any tournament, and also the PGA Championship in the USA.
Palmer had already won the Masters and the US Open that year. Americans rarely competed in The Open at that time due to logistics and the event’s modest prize money, and Palmer, aged 30 and with 19 PGA Tour titles, was playing in it for the first time. So Drum wrote about how Palmer was going to St Andrews in quest of a modern Grand Slam. Palmer later recalled: “Drum got me all excited about it. He got the British press all excited about it. Everybody picked up on it.”
Despite Palmer finishing runner up at St Andrews, so ending his quest for a modern Grand Slam, the concept of golf having four modern Majors had been born.
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