Every Player to Win Back-to-Back PGA Championships

The 2025 PGA Championship begins on Thursday.
Tiger Woods twice won back-to-back PGA Championships.
Tiger Woods twice won back-to-back PGA Championships. / Jack Gruber-Imagn Images

On Thursday, Xander Schauffele will look to defend his title as the PGA Championship begins at the Quail Hollow Club in North Carolina. Schauffele won his first PGA Championship last year at the Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky.

If Schauffele manages to win the 2025 PGA Championship, he will join an exclusive group of seven golfers who have won the PGA title in back-to-back years over the 106-year history of the championship. Here's a look at the seven golfers that have achieved this rare feat.

Golfer

Back-to-Back Championships

Total PGA Championships

Jim Barnes

1916, 1919

Two

Gene Sarazen

1922, 1923

Three

Walter Hagen

1924, 1925, 1926, 1927

Five

Leo Diegel

1928, 1929

Two

Denny Shute

1936, 1937

Two

Tiger Woods

1999, 2000; 2006, 2007

Four

Brooks Koepka

2018, 2019

Three

Jim Barnes won the inaugural PGA Championship in 1916. Though he did not win the championship in consecutive years, he did win back-to-back titles as the PGA Championship was not held in 1917 or 1918 due to World War I.

Walter Hagen is the only golfer to win more than two consecutive PGA Championships, winning four in a row from 1924 to '27. Hagen won a total of five PGA Championships, an achievement only matched by Jack Nicklaus, though Nicklaus never won his championships in back-to-back years.

Tiger Woods and Brooks Koepka are the only golfers that have won back-to-back titles since the match-play era ended, with Woods winning consecutive championships on two separate occasions in 1999 and 2000 and then in '06 and '07. To win his first back-to-back titles, Woods defeated Bob May in a playoff at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville at the 2000 PGA Championship. Koepka is the most recent player to win consecutive titles, doing so in 2018 and '19, and later won a third championship in 2023.


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Eva Geitheim
EVA GEITHEIM

Eva Geitheim is a contributor to the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Prior to joining SI in December 2024, she wrote for Newsweek, Gymnastics Now and Dodgers Nation. A Bay Area native, she has a bachelor's in communications from UCLA. When not writing, she can be found baking or re-watching Gilmore Girls.