Playoff golf is as good as it gets.

After 72 gruelling holes of action, two, three or four of the best players in the world duel it out, man on man, for all the glory.

One single shot can change the course of history. Who has what it takes to dig deep with everything on the line and play your very best golf? It’s a place where we see the very best in the world rise to the top. There’s also a degree of fortune.

In one hole of golf, anything can happen. That’s why we play over four days in the first place. Any playoff result, especially over one hole, could have pretty easily gone the other way.

So what if they did? I’ve taken the result of every single major championship playoff in golf history, from the very first in 1876, and flipped them.

Any player that won gets a major taken away from their tally, and anyone that lost gets a major added. If a player loses in a three-man playoff, they get a half-win. That way, there’s still the same number of majors to go around. The results are pretty incredible.

Rory McIlroy still haunted by Masters demons

In 2025, Rory McIlroy completed the career grand slam by winning The Masters, beating Justin Rose in a playoff.

Now, let’s imagine that Rose hits that incredible shot on 18 to make a birdie instead of McIlroy. In this scenario, McIlroy is still looking for his elusive green jacket and isn’t a career grand slam winner.

To take it a step further, this would have been Rose’s second Masters, as he’d have beaten Sergio Garcia in 2017 to become England’s most successful player at the tournament. More about that later.

Meanwhile, Garcia would have already become a major winner in 2007, beating Padraig Harrington to the Claret Jug.

Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods lose majors

Let’s take a step back and take a wider view. Here’s a list of players with the most major championship victories of all time. McIlroy snuck into the top 20 last year after winning the Masters.

Now, let’s flip the result of every major playoff, and Rory’s gone. And there are some big changes at the top. Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods both lose majors, but remain one and two on the list.

Walter Hagen falls, Ben Hogan rises, and Tom Watson makes a major move into the top five. And he leaves something even more incredible with his legacy.

Tom Watson breaks Phil Mickelson’s record

In this scenario, the 2009 Open Championship result is flipped, and Watson makes history.

He would have become the oldest ever major winner at 59 years old. At Turnberry that year, Watson came agonisingly close to doing the unthinkable. Tied with Stuart Cink after Regulation, the American duo played a four-hole playoff for the Claret Jug, and it was four holes too many for Watson.

He fell short of history, and Cink won the Claret Jug. Instead, it’s Phil Mickelson who holds the record after winning the PGA Championship in 2021 at 50, nine years younger than Watson was in 2009.

What’s more, Watson is a career Grand Slam winner in this scenario. He lost to John Mahaffey at the 1978 PGA Championship, the only major missing from his trophy cabinet.

The only major playoff Watson ever won was for his first major, the 1975 Open Championship against Jack Newton. So if he’d have been that bit more clutch, Watson could well have been in the discussion for being on the Mount Rushmore of golfers.

Greg Norman is a top 10 golfer of all time

Greg Norman is remembered as an incredible talent, but he’s become synonymous with his Sunday collapses. In 1986, he won the Saturday Slam, where he led every single major after Saturday. He won just one of them.

But under these rules, Norman goes from two majors to five, throwing him into the top 20 all-time. He’d have won the 1984 US Open and the 1993 PGA Championship, and he picks up half wins for the 1987 Masters and the 1989 Open Championship.

The man who only ever got the job done at the Open completes the career Grand Slam in these playoff losses alone. He goes from a generational choker to maybe a top 10 player ever.

Nick Faldo’s Masters record takes a major hit

Unlike Norman, there’s one man who could never be accused of being a choker in real life, who suffers the most in this scenario. I mentioned earlier that Rose would have become the most successful Englishman at the Masters, and your mind should have gone straight to one man.

Nick Faldo won three Green Jackets in his career, 1989, 1990 and 1996. Woods, Nicklaus and Faldo are the only three players to win the Green Jacket back-to-back, and that, along with his three Open Championship wins, is the foundation of his legacy.

And as a demonstration of just how clutch Faldo was, we look at his legacy completely differently if these playoff results were flipped.

Faldo won both the 1989 and 1990 Masters in a playoff, so in this scenario he only wins one Green Jacket in 1996. How differently would we view him if this was the case?

The only benefit for Faldo is that he’d have won the 1988 US Open, one of the two majors he never won.

Incidentally, Nicklaus, who won the 1966 Masters in a playoff, would also not have won back-to-back in the Masters, leaving Woods as the only man to have accomplished this.

Well, Woods and Ben Hogan.

Ben Hogan becomes most successful major player before Jack Nicklaus

In real life, Hogan is one of six men to have won the career Grand Slam. He won the Masters in 1951 and 1953, and in 54 he had the chance to go back-to-back, but he lost a playoff to Sam Snead in a clash of the titans. But in this scenario, Hogan wins two on the bounce.

There’s a real argument that Hogan was the biggest playoff loser in the sport’s history. He often found himself going head-to-head with the greatest figures to grace the tee box, and more often than not, he lost.

He lost the 1942 Masters in a playoff to Byron Nelson, the 1954 Masters to Snead, and he lost the 1955 US Open to Jack Fleck. His only major playoff win was a three-man duel with George Fazio and Lloyd Mangrum.

By flipping those results, Hogan gains two majors, bringing his total to 11 to break the record for the most major wins ever, only to be passed by both Nicklaus and Woods decades later.

Arnold Palmer dominates the 1960s

Arnold Palmer is one of the greatest and most beloved players to ever play the game, so you’ll be delighted to hear that in this scenario, the King’s legacy gets an even greater boost.

Palmer was 1-3 in major playoffs, losing once at the Masters to Nicklaus, and twice at the US Open. Under these rules, he gets an additional one and a half majors, bringing him to 8 and a half all-time.

Unfortunately, he never lost a PGA Championship playoff, so he doesn’t have the career grand slam, but under these rules, Palmer would share sixth on the all-time major wins list with Gary Player, who loses half a major, and this more accurately reflects how dominant Palmer really was in the early 60s.

Colin Montgomerie and Louis Oosthuizen win multiple majors

There are two players who I think are the biggest winners of this scenario. Two guys who are famous not for their successes at major championships, but instead their tragic shortcomings. “The nearly men”.

Colin Montgomerie holds the unwanted record for the most second-place finishes at majors without a win. He finished second at majors five times, three at the US Open, once at the Open, and once at the PGA Championship. And twice he lost in a playoff.

First was at the 1994 US Open, as Montgomerie lost to Ernie Els in a three-man playoff, and the very next year, he lost a playoff to Steve Elkington at the PGA Championship.

So flipping his playoff results, he wins one and a half according to these rules, and probably many more. Now it’s impossible to say how many majors Monty would have won if he’d had this off his back in the 90s, but it’s hard not to see him winning more without this label hanging over him.

And the same goes for Louis Oosthuizen. The South African, now playing on LIV Golf, is known for holding the runner-up slam, having finished second at every single major. He is currently sitting on one major win, the 2010 Open Championship, but oh, how many more it could have been.

He could have been a two-time Open winner, having lost a 3-man playoff in 2015 to winner Zach Johnson, and he’d have won a green jacket, instead losing to Bubba Watson in 2012.

If he’d have been that bit more clutch, or lucky, in those moments, Oosthuizen’s trophy cabinet would have been a far better reflection on his performances at majors.