Who Is the Best Golfer Without a Major? Breaking Down the Top Contenders

In this space just last month, I wrote that Tommy Fleetwood was “certainly the best player without a major title” going right now. I think Cameron Young might have pulled a Michael Jordan and taken that personally.

For an avid golf follower, I was slow to the Young hype train, but others like Fried Egg Golf’s PJ Clark were in the conductor’s chair. I vividly remember reading his piece “Confessions of a Cameron Young Addict” as we covered the U.S. Open last summer, before Young had even won on the PGA Tour.

Not only has Young won three times since then, two of them were The Players Championship (the “unofficial fifth major” of golf) and the PGA Tour’s newest signature event, the Cadillac Championship this weekend at Doral.

His opening-round 64 allowed him to go wire-to-wire and win by six strokes Sunday over Scottie Scheffler -- and watching Young’s explosion, you get the feeling Scheffler is a good comp, a prospect people considered the best player yet to win on tour in 2022 until he started winning everything in sight.

We’re a week away from PGA Championship week, so I think it’s time for one of the more fun debates in sports: Who’s the best golfer in the world without a major title?

It feels like we don’t have the discussion as much as we did in the Tiger/Phil era, perhaps because of the great spread of winners since the turn of the decade. There have been 13 first-time major champs since Gary Woodland at the 2019 U.S. Open, with guys like Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Collin Morikawa claiming two and Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Brooks Koepka padding their totals.

With all due respect to Colin Montgomerie and the generations before, we’re only going to explore active players and the current scene.

Two at the Top

Cameron Young: This New Yorker has been contending longer than you may realize. His T3 at the 2022 PGA Championship and runner-up to Cam Smith at St Andrews that year were the first two of his seven top-10 major finishes. He is an elite ball-striker who leads the PGA Tour this year in true strokes gained (which is adjusted for field strength), per DataGolf. Young’s major breakthrough is coming.

Tommy Fleetwood: Young is the hot commodity, but what Fleetwood has in his favor is longevity. His eight major top-10s are spread out since 2017 and he rarely misses cuts anymore. Instead of a Players Championship, he’s now the proud winner of a Tour Championship along with eight titles on the European Tour. It’d be a shame if his major career goes the way of Lee Westwood -- always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

The Nordic Golf League

Ludvig Aberg: Briefly the next big prospect in golf, Aberg has settled into a good rhythm of contending at signature events, but he has just two wins on tour to show for it. Though he kicked off his major career by finishing second and seventh in consecutive Masters, he hasn’t shown up at any of the others.

Viktor Hovland: More accomplished than his Swedish counterpart, with a Tour Championship and FedEx Cup title on his resume, Hovland has one top-five at each major since 2022. Too bad he just hasn’t gotten his game in order yet in 2026.

The Dark Horse

Tyrrell Hatton: He may get overlooked because he’s currently with LIV Golf, but after tying for third at the Masters, Hatton may be the player on this list closer than anyone to winning major No. 1. The numbers are eerily similar to fellow Englishman Fleetwood: one PGA Tour title, eight wins in Europe and eight major top-10s.

The Lee Westwood Award for Lifetime Achievement

Rickie Fowler: Look, he’s no longer the most talented player on this list, but Fowler is the most accomplished. We won’t forget his generational run in the 2010s, but of his 13 major top-10s, only two have come this decade. His fans can only hope he has a final act in him; Fowler’s been one of the best putters on tour and just posted top-10s at back-to-back signature events.