Test Your Tour Knowledge With Our Year-End Quiz

With the 2021 golf season in the rearview mirror and a new year fast approaching, it’s time to find out how much you were paying attention.

In what will be remembered as the year galleries returned to amplify the drama of an unusually jam-packed schedule, we saw the Ryder Cup, the Solheim Cup and the Summer Olympics added to a full slate of major championships. Season-long points races came down to the wire and player of the year votes were too close to call.

There were performances that introduced the world to new stars and others that saw legends turn back the clock.

So, how’s your recall? Take our year-end quiz, pass it around to your friends and help us crown a trivia champion golfer of the year:

1. Can you name the four men’s major champions?
2. COVID-19 wreaked havoc on the Summer Olympics, which, of course, had been delayed a full year due to the pandemic’s onset. Several big names dropped out of the field for virus-related issues, but the competition in Tokyo was still fierce. Can you name the medalists on the men’s side?
3. From about the midpoint of the LPGA Tour season, the race for the Rolex Player of the Year award was essentially reduced to two. Whose victory in the CME Group Tour Championship gave her the nod by the slimmest of margins?
4. The battle for PGA Tour Player of the Year honors was equally compelling. Ultimately, one player — who peaked during the FedEx Cup playoffs, collecting the $15 million winner’s haul — came out on top. Who was he?
5. One of those men’s major champions — and this will serve as a bit of a spoiler for that question — broke a 53-year-old record as the oldest winner of one of the sport’s four marquee events. Whose record did he surpass? (Bonus points if you can pinpoint the player’s age and the event he won.)
6. The Americans finally reclaimed the Ryder Cup in September, trouncing the Euros at Whistling Straits in Haven, Wisc., by a record-setting margin. What was the historic final tally?
7. Phil Mickelson, as is his wont, has siphoned much of the senior-circuit spotlight since he debuted on the PGA Tour Champions in the fall of 2020 — and he’s justified the hype with four wins in six starts. But the winner of the 2020-2021 Charles Schwab Cup was a 64-year-old who’s now finished atop the season-long points race a record six times. Who was it?  
8. Which LPGA standout held on for a one-stroke victory in the women’s Olympic golf competition, propelling herself to a breakout year at age 23? 
9. Appetites for intercontinental golf supremacy were whetted in July by the Solheim Cup, the biennial matches pitting 12 of Europe’s best female players against a dozen of America’s finest. In a 15-13 triumph for the Euros at Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, which player collected the clinching point?
10. A year-plus of sniping and social media shenanigans culminated in a fairly lopsided and drama-free showdown between Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau. Who won their post-Thanksgiving match?

Answers are below. But if you scrolled down here prematurely, the reigning PIP king, Phil Mickelson, is here to distract you from cheating…

Answers:

1. Hideki Matsuyama (Masters), Phil Mickelson (PGA Championship), Jon Rahm (U.S. Open), Collin Morikawa (British Open)
2. Xander Schauffele (gold), Rory Sabbitini (silver), C.T. Pan (bronze)
3. Jin Young Ko
4. Patrick Cantlay
5. Julius Boros (48 years, four months and 18 days, 1968 PGA Championship) 
6. 19-9
7. Bernhard Langer
8. Nelly Korda
9. Matilda Castren of Finland
10. Koepka won 4 and 3