At the risk of sounding self-important, we should lead with the truth of the matter: This mystery could have been solved by anyone who took a few hours to track down results with a newspapers.com account. However, nobody seems to have done so before us, and we now have an answer to the following question:
Who played the most holes ever at a single major?
On the surface, it may sound like a stupid question. Majors are 72 holes, sometimes there are playoffs, it can't be that hard, right? Ask Google, and its AI will tell you it's Billy Burke and George Von Elm at the 1931 U.S. Open, who each played 144 holes because of a 36-hole playoff that had to be repeated when the first one ended in another tie. Pretty crazy situation, but it's not even close!
Why?
Enter the PGA Championship's match play era. It lasted from the first championship in 1916 all the way to 1957, and though the format changed with time, the one constant was that winning this thing took an insane amount of endurance. You thought 144 holes at the U.S. Open was a lot? Turns out, there were 43 men who played at least 200 holes in the history of the match play era at the PGA. 200 holes! And nine of them played more than 210!
But who played the most? The PGA of America's record books were wrong, so in order to find the answer, we had to compile records from various online sources and then complete the missing pieces by going into newspapers.com to read contemporary accounts. As it turns out, the stories we ran into were tremendous, and on this week's Local Knowledge podcast, we explore the match play era, the champions, the weird and wonderful drama, and conclude by counting down the nine golfers who played more than 210 holes in the tournament's history, and the one man who tops them all.
We won't spoil the final answer, but we will tell you that the man played 219 holes in a single week, and we'll also tell you he didn't win—the record for most holes played while winning a major belongs to Ben Hogan, who played 213 holes in 1948. But though the man of mystery couldn't capture his own major, we're pleased to uncover the fact that he's the all-time leader in this feat of ridiculous endurance.
Listen to the episode below, or wherever you get your podcasts.