Written by Kyle Porter at CBS Sports.com
It is fitting that 47-year-old Phil Mickelson missed his first PGA Championship cut since 1995 in the same year that 24-year-old Justin Thomas joined Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Rory McIlroy as the only golfers younger than 25 to win the PGA Championship. That doesn’t meant that Mickelson is done (I think he’ll win again) and Thomas is going to go ahead and win five majors, but it is symbolic.
Only history will truly tell us when a new era of American golf was formally ushered in, but you could do worse than 2017 as a starting point. Jordan Spieth, also 24, won his third major at The Open Championship, and Brooks Koepka, age 27, won his first at the U.S. Open. Throw in Thomas’ PGA, and all of a sudden you have three (well) under-30 golfers taking three of the four majors in a season.
This might not be the seismic shift Thomas’ crowning and Mickelson’s missed cut represent, but it’s also not nothing. Americans have won seven of the past 12 majors, and five of those have been from golfers under 30. The other two were by Dustin Johnson (age 31 at the time) and Jimmy Walker (age 36 at the time).
| GOLFER | AGE | MAJOR WINS | MAJOR TOP 10S | PGA TOUR WINS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jordan Spieth | 24 | 3 (2015, 2017) | 7 | 11 |
| Dustin Johnson | 33 | 1 (2016) | 13 | 15 |
| Justin Thomas | 24 | 1 (2017) | 2 | 5 |
| Brooks Koepka | 27 | 1 (2017) | 6 | 2 |
| Rickie Fowler | 28 | 0 | 8 | 4 |
The symmetry was not lost on Thomas, either. He grew up the son of a PGA professional, and he remembered being at the 2000 PGA Championship at Valhalla, which Tiger Woods won over Bob May in preposterous fashion.
“That’s kind of the first memory for me in terms of … being at a golf tournament,” Thomas said. “I wanted to play professional golf; any kid, whatever they are doing, they think they are going to be the best at it and they want to be the best at it, whatever it is.
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