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Arnold Palmer
Arnold Palmer won seven major championships between 1958 and 1964, a relatively short window compared to Nicklaus's or Hogan's careers, but his impact on golf's popularity during that stretch is arguably unmatched by any player before or since — he brought a hard-charging, visibly emotional playing style to a sport that television was just beginning to broadcast nationally. Palmer's massive, working-class fan following became known as "Arnie's Army," a nickname that stuck through the rest of his career and captured just how differently fans related to him compared to the more reserved stars who preceded him. His rivalry with Jack Nicklaus through the 1960s, as the younger Nicklaus began overtaking him on the course, is still remembered as one of golf's defining storylines. Palmer's business partnership with sports agent Mark McCormack, beginning in 1960, is widely credited with essentially inventing modern sports agency and athlete endorsement deals — a commercial template other athletes and agents across every major sport eventually followed, extending Palmer's influence well past his own playing statistics. He never won the PGA Championship, the one major that eluded him, but his combination of on-course charisma and off-course business influence is why golf historians still credit him, more than any other single figure, with turning the sport into appointment television during the 1960s.
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Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods turned pro in 1996 at 20 and, within a year, won the 1997 Masters by 12 strokes at 21, becoming the tournament's youngest-ever champion and its first winner of Black or Asian heritage — a victory margin so large it remains the widest in Masters history. In 2000-2001, Woods held all four major championship titles simultaneously — the US Open, The Open Championship, PGA Championship, and the following year's Masters — a feat known as the "Tiger Slam." It wasn't a calendar-year Grand Slam, but it's the closest anyone has come to holding all four majors at once in the sport's modern history. Woods finished with 15 major championships, second only to Jack Nicklaus's 18, and his 82 PGA Tour wins are tied with Sam Snead for the most all-time. His victory at the 2019 Masters, 11 years after his previous major and following a serious 2009 personal scandal and a series of debilitating back surgeries, is widely regarded as one of the great comeback stories in sports history. Woods's dominance through the 2000s reshaped professional golf's economics almost single-handedly — television ratings, tournament purses, and sponsorship deals all rose dramatically during his prime, a commercial impact that golf historians still credit as much as his playing record when discussing his overall influence on the sport.
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