Golf’s magic number 59 has been achieved very few times. Fifteen different players have shot 59 in PGA Tour history. The first to do so was Al Geiberger, at Memphis in 1977. Fifteen players have carded a 59, with 16 total sub-60 rounds in PGA Tour history. Jim Furyk is the only player to break 60 twice, including a record 58 at the 2016 Travelers Championship.
Michael Kim became the most recent player to break 60 when he fired a 12-under 59 during the second round of the 2026 3M Open. Prior to Kim, Jake Knapp broke 60 when he opened the Cognizant Classic last year with a 59 in Round 1 at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
To achieve 59 it takes a brilliant round and more than a little luck to shoot a 59. That’s 13 under par on a par 72 course, 12 under on a par 71, 11 under on a par 70.
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First 59 ever
The magic number entered golf in 1977 on an extremely hot 100-degree June day in Memphis, Tennessee. Geiberger was playing the second round of the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic at the Colonial Country Club, a course that was playing at more than 7,200 yards, a monster length for those days.
“People would say, ‘Did you feel like you were going to shoot 59 that day?'” recalls Geiberger, now retired from the Champions Tour and living in the Palm Springs area. “I said, are you kidding me? I was choking walking up to the first tee. I was trying to figure out how to make the cut. I shot 72 in the first round and I had to shoot at least another 72 to make the cut. That was my thought. People ask, ‘How do you shoot 59?’ Well, you don’t start out with six straight birdies, because you choke to death the rest of the way, because I’ve done that. If you stopped me during the middle of the round and asked me how many under par I was, I wouldn’t have known. That’s a no-no in golf. You don’t count your score.”
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Players that have shot 59, the magic number
There have been 15 players that have been able to pull of a 59.
- Al Geiberger — 1977
- Chip Beck — 1991
- David Duval — 1999
- Paul Goydos — 2010
- Stuart Appleby — 2010
- Jim Furyk — 2013
- Justin Thomas — 2017
- Adam Hadwin — 2017
- Brandt Snedeker — 2018
- Kevin Chappell — 2019
- Scottie Scheffler — 2020
- Cameron Young — 2024
- Hayden Springer — 2024
- Jake Knapp — 2025
- Michael Kim — 2026
Jim Furyk is the only player to shoot both a 59 and a 58 on the PGA Tour. In 2013, at the BMW Championship, he became only the sixth golfer in PGA history to shoot a round of 59. In 2016, in the final round of the Travelers Championship, he shot a 12-under-par 58, missing a putt on the final green for a 57. This was the lowest 18-hole round ever shot in PGA history, making Furyk the first PGA professional ever to register two rounds under 60.
Scoring a 59 requires immense skill and perhaps a little luck and only the best of the best have been able to get there.
By Harini Oviya
