Inside Bernhard Langer\u2019s \u2018miraculous comeback journey\u2019 from a potential career-ending pickleball injury<\/a><\/p>\nIn 375 senior tour starts, Langer has won a record 47 titles, including 12 majors, while posting 237 top-10 finishes (that\u2019s 63.2 percent of all his starts). For context, the closest any \u201cactive\u201d PGA Tour Champions member is to Langer on the all-time win list is Steve Stricker with 18.<\/p>\n
Making Langer\u2019s run on the 50-and-older circuit even more impressive is the longevity he\u2019s shown, having won at least one PGA Tour Champions event every year since he started playing the tour in 2007. That\u2019s 18 straight seasons, which not surprisingly is a record as well. Again, for context, the next closest player is Hale Irwin with 11 followed by Gil Morgan and Miller Barber, both with nine. (Incidentally, the most consecutive years with a victory on the PGA Tour is 17, set by Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.)<\/p>\n
At age 68, however, even Langer can\u2019t outrun Father Time. Having made 19 starts on the PGA Tour Champions in 2025, he is winless so far this season. To keep his yearly streak alive, he will need to pull out a victory in one of the two remaining events: this week\u2019s Simmons Bank Championship or the Charles Schwab Championship from November 11-14.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not like Langer, who played in his 41st and final Masters in April, has played poorly this season; he has a runner-up finish and six top-10s, including his last two starts. However, the man is 68. Once more for context, he\u2019s not only the oldest player ever to win on the PGA Tour Champions, but the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth!!!<\/p>\n
Langer is well aware of how challenging it is to sustain a winning level of play over such a long period of time. At the end of the 2024 season, he spoke to Golf Channel about his ability to play so well for so long.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, it\u2019s a tough thing to have in golf, as we all know, whoever competes, it\u2019s difficult to be consistent, it\u2019s difficult to have longevity because it\u2019s such a fickle game,\u201d Langer said. \u201cIf you lose part of your game, a little bit here, a little bit there, you\u2019re gone. There\u2019s that much competition around. So I\u2019m very pleased and fortunate to have had 50 years basically of professional golf. And most of them are successful, so I\u2019m happy for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Langer fans, there is room for optimism that the streak can survive. After all, last year he faced the very same situation, needing to pull out a victory in the season-finale at Phoenix Country Club. Sure enough, he did it, shooting an 18-under 266 (including a final-round 66) to win by a shot over Richard Green. Conveniently Phoenix Country Club is where this year\u2019s Charles Schwab Championship will be held again.<\/p>\n
Also working for Langer is the fact that both of the final two events on this year\u2019s schedule have limited fields, with just 54 players competing this week at Pleasant Valley Country Club in Little Rock, Arkansas, and 36 in Arizona next month.<\/p>\n
No doubt Langer is very aware of what he\u2019s facing. He alluded to as much last year on Golf Channel when he was interviewed after his victory that extended his streak to 18.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very much [a motivation], especially \u2026 I enjoy competing and being around great guys on the Champions Tour,\u201d Langer said. \u201cTravelling to Phoenix, I knew this was my last chance to win this year and it would stop my streak that I had going. So it meant even more, not just beating the best players out there but winning on a golf course I\u2019d never won before and in the very last opportunity I had for the year to now have 18 in a row.\u201d<\/p>\n
Surely, the same holds true about trying to get to 19 in a row. The only question is whether Langer can will his way to yet another victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With 50 worldwide wins, including two Masters victories, Bernhard Langer was a Hall of Famer well before he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-232056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}