Men's major golf championships

Historically, the national open and amateur championships of Great Britain and the United States were regarded as the majors.

It is difficult to determine when the definition changed to include the current four tournaments, although many trace it to Arnold Palmer's 1960 season.

Until that time, many U.S. players such as Byron Nelson also considered the Western Open and the North and South Open as two of golf's "majors",[7] and the British PGA Matchplay Championship was as important to British and Commonwealth professionals as the PGA Championship was to Americans.

"[8] In 1960, Arnold Palmer entered The Open Championship in an attempt to emulate Hogan's 1953 feat of winning on his first visit.

Each of the majors has a distinct history, and they are run by four separate golf organizations, but their special status is recognized worldwide.

The top prizes of each of the majors are not actually the largest in golf, being surpassed by The Players Championship, three of the four World Golf Championships events (the HSBC Champions, promoted to WGC status in 2009, has a top prize comparable to that of the majors), and some other invitational events.

The Players Championship historically has offered a prize pool as large as or larger than the majors, because the PGA Tour wants its most important event to be as attractive.

By the early years of the first decade of the 21st century, only the Masters and Open Championship were broadcast live on the BBC.

From 2011 onwards Sky Sports has exclusive live coverage of the first two days of the Masters, with the weekend rounds shared with the BBC.

Beginning in 2016, Sky Sports also became the exclusive broadcaster of the Open Championship; the BBC elected to forego the final year of its contract.

[26] As none of the majors fall under the direct jurisdiction of tours, broadcast rights for these events are negotiated separately with each sanctioning body.

The Masters operates under one-year contracts; CBS has been the main TV partner every year since 1956, with ESPN broadcasting CBS-produced coverage of the first and second rounds since 2008 (replacing USA Network, which had shown the event since the early 1980s).

[28][29] ABC retained The Open Championship as its sole major, but moved its live coverage on the weekend to sister cable network ESPN in 2010.

In June 2015, it was announced that NBC and Golf Channel would acquire rights to the Open Championship under a 12-year deal.

[31][32] As of 2020, CBS and ESPN hold the broadcast rights to the PGA Championship, under a new contract that replaces TNT as the tournament's cable partner.

It was rare, before the early 1960s, for the leading players from around the world to have the opportunity to compete in all four of the "modern" majors in one season, because of the different qualifying criteria used in each at the time, the costs of traveling to compete (in an era when tournament prize money was very low, and only the champion himself would earn the chance of ongoing endorsements), and on occasion even the conflicting scheduling of the Open and PGA Championships.

In 1937, the U.S. Ryder Cup side all competed in The Open Championship, but of those who finished in the top ten of that event, only Ed Dudley could claim a "top ten" finish in all four of the majors in 1937, if his defeat in the last-16 round of that year's PGA Championship (then at match play) was considered a "joint 9th" position.

Following 1960, when Arnold Palmer's narrowly failed bid to add the Open Championship to his Masters and U.S. Open titles (and thus emulate Hogan's 1953 "triple crown") helped to establish the concept of the modern professional "Grand Slam", it has become commonplace for the leading players to be invited to, and indeed compete in, all four majors each year.

Lee Westwood holds the record for the most major championship appearances without a victory, with 91 starts.