Ranking The Best PGA Championship Competitors Of All-Time
By Bill Felber
PGA Championship Era: 1916 to 1929
Throughout the first full decade of the PGA Championship’s existence, there is one and only one leading name. That name is Walter Hagen.
Five times between 1921 and 1927, Hagen reined as PGA champion. The championship was contested then – as it continued through 1957 – as match play, a format at which Hagen excelled.
How dominant was Hagen? Between 1921 and 1927, his record in PGA Championship matches was 30-1, his only defeat coming to Gene Sarazen in two extra holes of the finals of the 1923 PGA Championship. During that stretch, only five of Hagen’s 30 match victories lasted to the final hole.
Hagen obviously benefitted from the fact that the PGA was a pros-only event. That excluded his principal rival, amateur Bobby Jones. Over that same 1921-27 period, Jones won two U.S. Opens, Hagen none.
Hagen did have some capable rivals. Sarazen’s 1923 victory marked his successful defense of the title he had first won in 1922 when Hagen elected not to compete. Jim Barnes won the inaugural PGA Championship in 1916, repeated in 1919, and lost to Hagen in both the 1921 and 1924 final.
But the tournament’s first decade clearly belonged to Hagen. Here’s how the 10 most dominant players stacked up based on the average standard deviation of performance.
1. Walter Hagen, -1.51
2. Jim Barnes, -0.98
3. Jock Hutchison, -0.89
4. Willie Macfarlane, -0.85
5. Leo Diegel, -0.83
6. John Golden, -0.77
7. George McLean, -0.77
8. Tom Kerrigan, -0.62
9. Gene Sarazen, -0.59
10. Al Espinosa, -0.47
The 0.53 gap between Hagen and his closest competitor for the decade, Barnes, is the widest we will see until the arrival of Tiger Woods on the scene three-quarters of a century later. In the PGA, at least, Hagen was Woods before Woods was Woods.