Ranking the 10 Best Masters Wins of All Time
A tradition unlike any other warrants a triumph of that significance, too.
As the 90th edition of The Masters wound its way to a Sunday close, B/R's golf team was hard at work compiling a list of the tournament's past victories that deserve a place among its all-time best.
What separates these from the rest? We considered the narrative around each win, along with the margin of victory and/or how thrilling each was. The collection was ultimately whittled to a top 10.
Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought in the app comments.
Honorable Mentions
1 of 11
After 90 tournaments, there couldn't have been only 10 included, right?
That's why we decided to add a few more wins that were considered for the final collection but barely missed the cut.
Gene Sarazen, 1935: The tradition had to start somewhere. It's not uncommon to suggest it was Gene Sarazen's win in 1935, enabled by the Hall of Famer's final-round "Shot Heard 'Round the World" on No. 15, that lifted a then-fledgling tournament to the big time in just its second incarnation.
Jack Nicklaus, 1966: The "Golden Bear" owns a bookshelf full of records at Augusta, and he won a three-way playoff in 1966. He shot 70 in a full round on Monday to defeat Tommy Jacobs (72) and Gay Brewer (78) and become the first player to win two Masters in a row.
Jack Nicklaus, 1975: Yep, it's him again. He shot 68-67 in the first two rounds to take a five-shot lead into Saturday, but both Tom Weiskopf and Johnny Miller went low on Saturday, firing 66 and 65, respectively. Each man had birdie putts on the 72nd hole to force a playoff. Neither converted, so Nicklaus won his fifth.
10. Rory McIlroy, 2026
2 of 11
It was more a finger-painting than a masterpiece this time.
Still, Rory McIlroy simultaneously joined both an elite group of multiple winners at Augusta and the even-more-exclusive club of repeat champions. He steeled himself on Sunday after losing a six-shot lead through 36 holes and ultimately won by a stroke over world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler.
The 36-year-old entered the final round tied with Cameron Young and actually fell three shots back after three-putting for a double bogey at the fourth hole and bogeying No. 6.
But he shot four-under across the subsequent 11 holes and had a two-stroke lead heading to 18, allowing for the tap-in bogey that sealed it.
9. Jordan Spieth, 2015
3 of 11
Jordan Spieth's Masters tale is most accurately told in two parts.
His 2015 victory was record-worthy in many ways after he strung together rounds of 64, 66, 70 and 70 to equal the then-lowest 72-hole score in tournament history. He became the first wire-to-wire winner in 39 years, and the event's second-youngest champion at just 21 years and 259 days old.
A year later, the Texan entered Sunday's back nine with a five-stroke lead. It seemed like his era of dominance had just begun. Until it didn't.
Instead, he plummeted to a five-over 41 to finish the final round and dropped to a second-place tie three shots off the pace of eventual winner Danny Willett. He hasn't finished better than third in 10 tries since.
8. Gary Player, 1978
4 of 11
We're all for eternal optimism, but this one stretched the boundaries.
Gary Player woke up on the Sunday morning of 1978's tournament in a tie for 10th place, with a seven-stroke gap between he and 54-hole leader Hubert Green.
No problem, said the hearty South African, who was a putt-sinking machine. He fired a 30 on the back nine to capture his third green jacket by a stroke over Green and two others. The 42-year-old became the event's then-oldest winner.
No less an authority than Golf Digest put Player's comeback third on a collection of the best final days in Masters history, upping the ante to label it "the best pure single round" at Augusta.
That's good enough for us.
7. Phil Mickelson, 2004
5 of 11
To say it was a long time coming would be a par-5 understatement.
Phil Mickelson was a 13-year PGA Tour veteran and had played 46 majors before breaking through and winning his first in 2004 at the Masters, where he'd felt all the feels while racking up seven top-10 finishes in the previous nine years.
He grabbed a piece of the 54-hole lead with a three-under 69 on Saturday and held it together through a pressure-cooker of a Sunday. He ultimately sank an 18-footer for birdie on the 18th to beat Ernie Els by a shot, and he created one of the sport's iconic winning photos as he leaped and yelled out, "I did it!"
Mickelson wound up winning a single major in four of the next nine years—including another at Augusta in 2006—and got to six for his career with an unlikely triumph as a 50-year-old at the PGA Championship in 2021.
6. Rory McIlroy, 2025
6 of 11
There are milestones. And then there are milestones.
Twenty-one years after Mickelson finally bagged the Masters to begin his collection of major titles, McIlroy finally got it done over four days in Augusta to complete his complement of Grand Slam trophies.
The popular product of Northern Ireland had experienced Mickelson-like travails at the event. He had seven top-10 finishes alongside an epic disappointment in 2011, when he'd led by four strokes after 54 holes before a final-round 80 left him in an unsightly tie for 15th place, 10 shots off the lead.
But it was all forgotten last spring, when McIlroy reached Sunday with a two-shot lead, held it together after Justin Rose rallied to force a playoff, then won it with a birdie on the first extra hole to become the sixth player to win all four majors.
5. Larry Mize, 1987
7 of 11
One man's agony is another man's ecstasy. No one knows that more in an Augusta context than Greg Norman.
Norman was the world's No. 1 player in the spring of 1987 when he went to a Sunday afternoon playoff with past champion Seve Ballesteros and one-time PGA Tour winner Larry Mize that yielded one of the event's all-time moments.
Ballesteros was bumped from contention on the first extra hole. Mize seemed next to fall out when his approach on the second, the par-4 11th, wound up off the green and more than 100 feet from the hole. Norman, meanwhile, was about 50 feet away on the green's edge and two putts away from a would-be triumph.
Instead, Mize holed out his chip for a now-legendary birdie, and a stunned Norman failed to convert his follow-up, providing Mize, an Augusta native, with his lone career major.
4. Tiger Woods, 2019
8 of 11
It's difficult to think of Augusta without Tiger Woods, and vice versa.
But even after 14 career majors and four Masters wins from 1997 to 2008, prospects for him donning another green jacket following a decade of injury and turmoil in which he'd plummeted out of the world rankings seemed dire at best.
So when he strode to the 18th green on Sunday in 2019 with a two-shot lead, it was memorable for myriad reasons. And when he tapped in for bogey to make it official, it was downright historic.
The 43-year-old became the tournament's second-oldest champion and established a record for the longest stretch—14 years—between Masters wins.
He also experienced an emotional greenside celebration during which he hugged his son, Charlie, in nearly the same spot where he'd hugged his since-deceased father after winning for the first time in 1997.
3. Nick Faldo, 1996
9 of 11
Remember that line about agony and ecstasy?
Norman surely does. All too well.
The "Shark" was circling the field again in search of his first Masters win nine years after Mize's miracle. This time, he held a six-shot lead to begin play on Sunday and a four-shot bulge as he teed off on the par-5 eighth.
But it didn't work out.
Bogeys at 9, 10 and 11 erased Norman's advantage and reduced him to a tie with a hard-charging Nick Faldo. A tee shot into the water on 12 led to a double bogey that yielded the lead entirely on the way to a final five-shot deficit.
It was the last of Faldo's three Masters wins and six career majors, while Norman, who had won the British Open in 1986 and 1993, made just three cuts in his last seven competitive trips to Augusta with one top-10 finish.
2. Tiger Woods, 1997
10 of 11
By the time you're down to two, you're splitting hairs.
We went with Woods' statement-making win in 1997 as the second-best in the tournament's history, with a then-21-year-old going 66-65-69 across his last three rounds to win by a Masters-record 12 strokes over Tom Kite.
His 72-hole score of 270 established a record that stood for 23 years and started a run of dominance in which Woods won 13 of the next 45 majors in which he played. That 28.8 percent win rate included a stretch in which he captured all four majors in succession from June 2000 to April 2001.
Kite, on the ground that first week in Augusta, saw it coming.
"It is like when Jack Nicklaus came out in the 60s," he said. "He was way out in front, and everyone else on tour spent the next 20 to 30 years catching up. This seems to be the next generation."
1. Jack Nicklaus, 1986
11 of 11
You want to say Woods is the greatest player of all time? Fine.
But Nicklaus has more majors than anyone who's ever swung a club, and we'll contend that the 18th and last of those wins—at Augusta in 1986—stands alone, too.
And not just because it came six years after his previous major win.
Fans of a certain age still get goosebumps viewing footage of the 46-year-old Golden Bear's charge through the back nine, which he played in six-under 30 and included an 18-footer for birdie on No. 17 that gave him his first outright lead and inspired Verne Lundquist's iconic "Maybe… Yes, sir!" call on CBS.
Nicklaus remains the oldest player to win the event, still sets the standard with six wins at Augusta, and simultaneously established record spans of 23 years from his first to last Masters win and 24 years from his first to last major.
"I finally found that guy I used to know on the golf course," Nicklaus said. "It was me."
.jpg?w=600 "Browns Rejected Cowboys Trade Offer")
