10 Best Golfers Who Never Won The Masters Tournament
The Masters Tournament dates to 1934, and most of the best golfers in the game's history since then have won this major championship. But not all of them! In fact, some big names are missing from the list of Masters champions. Who are the biggest-name golfers who never won The Masters? Let's count them down, from No. 10 to No. 1.
A note about who we considered for this list: Obviously, golfers whose careers ended before 1934 are not eligible. Only golfers with at least three Masters appearances were considered. Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones and Tommy Armour were specifically excluded from consideration because their careers were near their ends by the time The Masters was founded. (Jones had retired from competition in 1930, although he played in more than 10 Masters.)
10. Julius Boros
Boros won 18 times on the PGA Tour, including three majors. His last victory in a major came at age 48 at the 1968 PGA Championship. In 25 appearances at The Masters, his best finish was a tie for third.
9. Lloyd Mangrum
A 36-time winner on the PGA Tour, with one major championship victory, Mangrum had many good years at Augusta National. He just never won the thing. Mangrum finished second twice, third twice and fourth twice. From 1947 to 1956, he finished no lower than eighth.
8. Hale Irwin
The three-time U.S. Open champion wore some of the best plaid pants of the 1970s. But Irwin never wore the crown as Masters champ, despite finishing in the Top 10 seven times. From 1974-77, Irwin finished no lower than fifth at Augusta National.
7. Nick Price
Price won the British Open once and PGA Championship twice. But his best finish at The Masters was fifth place. He finished sixth three other times. No better than fifth is surprising given that Augusta National was clearly a course Price could do damage to. He was, after all, the first golfer to shoot 63 in The Masters, doing so in the third round in 1986.
6. Greg Norman
Norman's heartbreaks at Augusta are legend. In 1986, Jack Nicklaus' last charge beat him. In 1987, Larry Mize's chip-in beat him. Infamously, in 1996, his own mighty collapse and Nick Faldo's great round beat him. That sort of thing happened a lot to Norman, and not just at Augusta. He still managed to put together Hall of Fame win totals, though.
5. Johnny Miller
Miller, a 25-time PGA Tour winner and 2-time major champ, is one of those guys whose game seemed perfect for Augusta National. But he had surprisingly few Top 10 finishes: only four in 19 Masters appearances. But three of those (1971, 1975, 1981) were second-place showings. And he was involved in the famous back-nine duel with Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf at the 1975 Masters.
4. Ernie Els
Els' combination of power and touch seemed tailor-made for Augusta National, but he just couldn't make it happen. He won four other majors. And in the The Masters he twice finished runner-up (2000, 2004). But he never won it.
3. Bobby Locke
Locke won the British Open four times. On the PGA Tour in the late 1940s, Locke played 59 tournaments and finished in the Top 4 in 34 of them, with 11 wins. But in 1949, Locke and the PGA Tour got into a fight over playing commitments and the tour wound up banning him. That ban was lifted a couple years later, but Locke rarely returned to America. He played The Masters only four times, his best finish a tie for 10th.
2. Peter Thomson
The great Australian was one of the best links golfers ever, winning the British Open five times. But in eight Masters appearances, Peter Thomson finished in the Top 10 just once. He could have played The Masters more often, but chose not to, concentrating on the less-manicured golf courses he preferred in Europe and Australia. Thomson is one of the few golfers to publicly admit a dislike of Augusta National.
1. Lee Trevino
Trevino won 29 times on the PGA Tour (and another 29 times on the Champions Tour), and that figure includes two wins in each of the other three majors: the U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship. Those numbers would probably be even more impressive but for injury woes that started after Trevino was struck by lightning in 1975.Injury wasn't Trevino's problem in The Masters, though. Trevino, his contemporaries say, psyched himself out of winning the Masters. He believed his game wasn't suited to the golf course, and he even skipped a couple Masters during his heyday in the early 1970s.
Trevino just never felt comfortable at Augusta National. He often avoided entering the clubhouse, heading straight from his car to the driving range. He even once said that he would "get down on my knees and pray they (Augusta National officials) don't invite me back."
Trevino's best finish in a Masters was 10th in both 1975 and 1985.
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