Golf Compendium

The San Francisco Open was a golf tournament on the PGA Tour that began as a match-play tournament but ended as a stroke-play event. During the match era, it was known as the San Francisco National Match Play Open. It was part of the winter tour, scheduled among other tournaments in California.

Two of the highest non-military honors the United States can bestow on civilians are the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And some golfers have been awarded one or the other — some golfers have even gotten both.

What is the tournament record for most cuts made in the PGA Championship? We'll answer that question in two different ways in this article.

The PGA Championship is the second-oldest of the USA-based major championships of men's professional golf, first played in 1916. Below you'll find a rundown of the tournament's all-time records, the bests and worsts and the golfers who set those marks.

"Futures Tour" was, for many years, the name of the LPGA's developmental circuit for golfers who aspired to play on the LPGA Tour. The LPGA is the top-level, U.S.-based tour for women professional golfers; the Futures Tour was the second-level, U.S.-based tour for professional golfers.

Jim Turnesa won a couple times on the PGA Tour in the 1950s, but one of those wins was a major championship. He was just as famous in his time, though, for a PGA Championship that he lost only after playing his way through a murderer's row of opponents; and for a Ryder Cup match that was an early example of two opponents struggling with the crushing pressure of the moment.

"40 Balls" is the name of a golf tournament format for four-person teams. Each team member plays his or her own ball throughout, so on each hole there are four, individual scores being returned on each team. How many of those scores does the team use? A total of 40 of them over the course of the 18-hole round.

The Ladies European Tour (LET) is the top-level women's professional golf tour in Europe. Its squad, known as Team Europe, faces Team USA in the Solheim Cup every other year. Below are the Ladies European Tour record-holders for youngest winners and oldest winners.

The book and movie The Godfather (affiliate links) brought to common understanding the expression "sleep with the fishes." In golf (as in life), you never want your golf ball to sleep with the fishes, because that means you've hit into water. But hitting into water can also be an opportunity when your group is playing the golf betting game called Fishies.

What are the biggest winning margins ever in LPGA Tour tournaments? The LPGA plays tournaments of both 72 holes (four rounds) and 54 holes (three rounds) in length. So we've included the record for both below.

Arnold Palmer wound up with 62 PGA Tour victories in his career, seven of them major championships. But he had to start somewhere. That's what you'll read about below: the first PGA Tour tournament that Palmer ever played, which happened while he was still an amateur; and when and where he made his professional debut on the PGA Tour.

Tom Kerrigan was an American golf professional who won tournaments on the fledgling pro tour in the 1920s, and who had a 50-year-run as club pro at Siwanoy Country Club in New York. He also has the distinction of playing the first stroke in the history of the PGA Championship tournament.

The Bank of America Championship, known by multiple prior names, was a golf tournament on the Champions Tour for nearly 30 years. It stretched from the early 1980s into the late 2000-aughts. The tournament was always played in the Boston area.

In golf, the term "battlefield promotion" refers to a golfer winning enough on a lower-level tour that he or she automatically gets promoted to a higher tour. The PGA Tour has such an arrangement with its developmental tour. Does the LPGA Tour? Can a golfer get onto the LPGA Tour through a "battlefield promotion"?

The Big Break V: Hawaii was the fifth season of the Golf Channel reality/competition series The Big Break . Often called, in shorthand, Big Break V or Big Break Hawaii , this was the second edition of Big Break that featured an all-women cast of golfers (the first being Big Break III: Ladies Only ).

Each year, golfers on the PGA Tour's developmental circuit have available to them a special way of earning promotion to the big leagues: If they win enough tournaments, they get to go straight to the PGA Tour. But how many golfers have played their way onto the PGA Tour in this way?

What is a "triple bogey" in golf scoring? If a bogey is 1-over par on a hole, and a double bogey is 2-over par on a hole ...

In the decades after World War II, Philomena Garvey dominated Irish women's golf. During the stretch from 1946-63, she won all but four years of the top Irish women's tournament. Garvey once refused to play in the Curtis Cup because Ireland was left out of the Team GB&I crest.

Maybe you've heard an announcer say on a golf broadcast something along the lines of, "Golfer X started bleeding on the third hole," or heard one golfer say to another something like, "You really need to stop the bleeding." In golf, those expressions are lingo referring to poor play.

The first step in chasing the single-season grand slam on the PGA Tour is winning the first major championship of the year. The second step is winning the year's second major. The third step is ... well, nobody has ever made it to the third step: No golfer has ever won the first three men's majors of the year, much less all four.

Jack Nicklaus was in his late teens when he began showing up in PGA Tour tournaments. That was the late 1950s. And Nicklaus' entry into a tournament in those days, when he was building a great amateur record, always garnered attention. But what was his first PGA Tour appearance? How'd he do? And what about his pro debut — after turning pro, where did make his first PGA Tour start?

The Robinson Open Golf Classic was a small-town tournament that survived for a half-dozen years on the PGA Tour in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Its biggest-name champion was Bob Goalby.

In 1930, Bobby Jones won a PGA Tour tournament in Augusta, Georgia. The distant second-place finisher had beaten Jones earlier in the year, and went on to win the first Masters Tournament . This win by Jones, however, was not at Augusta National.

Bob Goalby won a Masters Tournament, but in a way that caused many fans to treat him as something of an accidental championship. He wasn't: Goalby earned that win, and double-digit wins on the PGA Tour. He also played a part in the creation of the modern PGA Tour, and then of the Senior Tour.

Did you know that Ben Hogan is credited with starting the Champions Dinner tradition at Augusta National Golf Club during Masters Tournament week? Keep reading to see the letter Hogan sent that started it all.

The Chevron Championship is one of the five majors of women's professional golf, played early in every LPGA Tour season. It has been one of the LPGA Tour's majors since 1983. So this tournament's list of winners has something of a split history: the winners of it as a major, and the pre-major winners.