Which of the four majors is the best and why?

BUNKER-TO-BUNKER… Inside Golf writers have their say!

By Peter Owen

IF I’D answered this question a few years ago I’d probably have said the US Masters. Who doesn’t love Augusta National’s impossibly beautiful setting and the exciting competition it always generates?

But I’m beginning to think its so-called ‘tradition’ is a bit contrived, and I don’t like that 70-year-old has-beens are allowed to tee it up in favour of contemporary pros who actually have a chance of contending. And I’m over its weird customs, like insisting caddies wear demeaning white overalls that are just as inappropriate on a golf course today as they once were on southern US cotton fields.

The US PGA is no better an event than the Players Championship, the Arnold Palmer Invitational – or any of the $20 million tournaments that attract the stars. And the US Open seems to always encourage its organisers to set up a course so difficult it makes even the world’s best look like dills. 

So that leaves the Open, the oldest and most revered of all the tournaments. It’s always played on a links course, where the unpredictable terrain and weather make for compelling competition, enthralling viewing, and thoroughly test everyone’s skill. 

It’s the world’s most international golf event and the pinnacle of the game. It’s been played since 1860 and every competitor feels the weight of that great history when they play.

The Open’s just that – open to every golfer who’s good enough to qualify. And it’s played most closely to the way the game was meant to be played.

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By Larry Canning

IF it comes to pure aesthetic beauty, the Masters has it covered by flowering crab apple loblolly peach blossoms, etc. 

Yeah, it’s gorgeous but who actually gets to smell the roses each year? It seems whoever the members at Augusta see fit to invite. Only 90 players get a sniff, 20 of whom are nearly my age, a bunch of amateurs and every winner from the 40-odd events on the PGA Tour. Surely a major cannot be invitation only!

Unfortunately, the US PGA Championship is often referred to as the poor cousin who fronts up at Christmas with a six-pack of VB. The PGA of America could have changed all that when, back in 2013, they floated the idea of sending arguably the best field in golf to other countries. Sadly, that’s 10 years ago and still nothing. 

The US Open has an amazing history dating back to 1895 and its unique formula of creating the toughest test for the world’s best makes for brilliant viewing. It’s man versus course where instead of players arriving in limousines its Black-Hawks. The exemptions are a little American biased, but with 9000 entries each year it clearly is a championship for the people.

The winner for me is The Open because it truly is “Open”. Their system of qualifying is impartial and uncluttered. 

The golf courses demand everything a major should offer. Creative ball striking, imagination, great hands and, unlike the US Open, the ability to outsmart one of the world’s cleverest golf courses.

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By Michael Davis

THIS is bit like being asked which of your children you love the most.

All four majors are wonderful events in their own right. But forced to choose one over the other I like the Open Championship followed by the Masters at Augusta, the US Open and the US PGA Championship

Having been lucky enough to attend a swag of Opens and to cover them for daily newspapers and radio stations back home in Australia, I never lost the exhilaration attached to walking through the turnstiles at the Open for the start of each day’s play.

The atmosphere is electric, the crowd hums with excitement and you can almost cut the anticipation with a knife.

Every playing group you latch onto is a story. You almost don’t know which way to look. And the venue teems with golf fans – almost all of them highly knowledgeable about the game of golf. 

A poor shot is met with stunned silence. The galleries really know their game at the Open Championship. The other plus for the Open is that it is a genuine contest open to all comers – amateur and professional. If you keep coming through the pre-qualifying, you eventually end up in the field.

It is also the closest thing, in my view, we have to a world championship of golf. Please don’t call yourself an international player if you don’t try to front up at the Open every year.

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By Michael Court

WE have to play to our strengths, right?

And surely Jim Ferrier, David Graham, Wayne Grady, Steve Elkington and Jason Day can’t be wrong.

They have all won the US PGA so, from an Australian point of view, surely the US PGA has to be the greatest major of them all … to us.

Of course, I jest and many would make a case that with so many club pros playing the US PGA is, in fact, the weakest of the four majors and with so many Americans dominating might not even be worthy of major status at all.

The US Open? Don’t even start me on that one. The only thing these two majors really have going for them is the magnificent courses that both these championships are played on as they move around the US states.

I’ve been lucky enough to attend several British Opens and a US Masters and I can say without fear or favour that The Open is by far the greatest of the majors.

Australia has a great record in that major too with our own greats of the game Peter Thomson (five times), Kel Nagle, Greg Norman (twice), Ian Baker-Finch and Cameron Smith now engraved on the trophy.

It is the one major that anyone in the world, except perhaps Maurice Flitcroft, can try to qualify for – provided they can get their handicap low enough.

And it’s the all professionals (and a heck of a lot of amateurs) crave to play in. 

What do you think? Email comments to david@insidegolf.com.au