Some tournament victories are described as being wire-to-wire. For example Xander Schauffele’s 2024 PGA Championship win was so described. A wire-to-wire victory is one where the ultimate victor was at the head of the leaderboard at the end of each of the rounds of the tournament.
He or she does not have to have been in the solo lead after every round, but has to have been in at least the joint lead. Nor does a wire-to-wire winner have to have been top of the leaderboard at all times during the tournament, only at the end of each round.
As such, the way the term is used in golf is slightly different to that which is used in horse racing from whence the phrase originated. In horse racing a wire-to-wire winner does indeed lead at every point during a race. The phrase itself refers to the two wires used in horse racing: the first to denote the start and the second the finish line. Therefore a winner who led from the start to finish came to be described as a wire-to-wire winner.
Four of Tiger Woods’ Major wins were wire-to-wire ones: the 2000 US Open; 2000 PGA Championship; 2002 US Open and 2005 Open Championship. Moreover, of this quartet, only in the 2000 PGA Championship was he even tied for the lead after any round – in that tournament he was tied after the first round with Scott Dunlap, on six under par.
In winning The Open in 2005 in this fashion, Tiger Woods became the sixth man to hold the outright lead after all four rounds of an Open Championship. He followed Ted Ray (1912), Bobby Jones (1927), Gene Sarazen (1932), Henry Cotton (1934) and Tom Weiskopf (1973) in so doing. Subsequently Rory McIlroy also achieved this, in 2014.
Other Champion Golfers Of The Year have won wire-to-wire since The Open became a 72-hole four-round tournaments, but were joint leaders at some stage: Harry Vardon (1899 and 1903), J.H. Taylor (1900), Lee Trevino (1971), Gary Player (1974) and Jordan Spieth (2017).
