Ernie Els: The Big Easy and Four Major Championships
Theodore Ernest Els is the most naturally gifted ball-striker of his generation and the possessor of the most fluid golf swing the professional game has produced since Sam Snead. With four major championships, a World Golf Hall of Fame induction, and a nickname — The Big Easy — that perfectly captures the effortless quality of a swing that makes hitting a golf ball look like the simplest thing in the world, Ernie Els is one of the three or four greatest players of the 1990s and 2000s and a figure whose influence on how professional golf looks extends well beyond his win total.
Growing Up in South Africa
Ernie Els was born October 17, 1969, in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was a multisport athlete as a child — good enough at tennis to be a serious junior prospect and an outstanding cricket player — before dedicating himself entirely to golf in his mid-teens. His natural athleticism translated immediately into a golf swing of unusual grace: the wide arc, the unhurried tempo, the complete absence of visible effort that would eventually make him one of the game's most imitated and admired ball-strikers.
He turned professional in 1989 and quickly established himself as the dominant player in South African golf before his international breakthrough. His win at the 1992 South African Open announced someone who was not merely talented but dimensionally ahead of his competition in ways that suggested a different level of ceiling.
The U.S. Open Victories
Els won his first major at the 1994 U.S. Open at Oakmont, the same course that had witnessed so much major championship drama over the previous decades. He won in a three-way playoff over Colin Montgomerie and Loren Roberts, defeating Montgomerie with a birdie on the second sudden-death hole. He was 24 years old and became only the second South African after Gary Player to win the U.S. Open.
He returned to win the U.S. Open again at Congressional in 1997, defeating Colin Montgomerie by one shot with rounds of 71-72-67-69. The back-to-back U.S. Open wins in 1994 and 1997 placed him unambiguously among the elite of his generation alongside Tiger Woods, who was just beginning to emerge as the sport's dominant figure.
The Open Championship Victories
Els won The Open Championship at Muirfield in 2002 in one of the most dramatic finishes in the tournament's history. He finished at six under par, then watched from the clubhouse as four players had putts to tie or beat him on the final hole. All four missed. He won by one. The victory demonstrated something important about Els as a competitor: his game was suited to links conditions in a way that made him dangerous at any Open Championship venue.
His second Claret Jug came at Royal Lytham & St Annes in 2012, at age 42, in another remarkable finish. Adam Scott had led by four with four holes to play and made bogeys on the final four holes. Els, watching from the scorer's room, made birdie on 18 to complete a round of 68 and win at seven under par. It remains one of the most improbable major championship victories of the modern era and one of the most celebrated collapses, establishing Els as a champion and Scott's collapse as a cautionary tale that time eventually erased when Scott won the Masters the following year.
The Swing That Made Him Famous
Ernie Els's golf swing is one of the most analyzed and admired in the history of the professional game. Its defining characteristic is tempo: the transition from backswing to downswing is so unhurried that it appears, on first viewing, to be incompatible with the ball speed it generates. The width of his arc, the quiet lower body, and the effortless extension through impact produce a swing that teaching professionals have studied and students have attempted to replicate for three decades.
David Leadbetter, who worked with Els for many years, described his swing as one of the finest natural examples of timing overcoming apparent physical effort that he had encountered. Els himself has attributed much of his tempo to his formative years playing tennis and cricket, where the sense of meeting the ball rather than forcing it was fundamental to technique in both sports.
The rivalry with Tiger Woods
For much of the 1990s and 2000s, Ernie Els was the best golfer in the world when Tiger Woods was not playing. The distinction is significant: in any other era, Els's game — his ball-striking, his putting at his best, his course management — would have produced more major championships. The specific misfortune of his career was competing in the same era as the most dominant player the game has produced. He finished runner-up to Woods in major championships more than once, most painfully at the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach where Woods won by 15 shots and Els finished tied for second.
The two maintained genuine mutual respect throughout the competitive period of their careers, a relationship that contrasted with the more fraught dynamics between Woods and some other contemporaries.
Els Foundation and Legacy
The Els for Autism Foundation, founded in 2009 after Els's son Ben was diagnosed with autism at age three, has become one of professional golf's most significant philanthropic enterprises. The Foundation runs the Els Center of Excellence in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida — a school and therapy center for children with autism — and has raised tens of millions of dollars for autism research and education. Els's commitment to this work has become as defining a part of his public identity as his four major championships.
FAQs About Ernie Els
How many majors did Ernie Els win? Els won four major championships: two U.S. Opens (1994, 1997) and two Open Championships (2002, 2012).
Why is Ernie Els called The Big Easy? The nickname refers both to Els's large physical frame and to the effortless quality of his golf swing — the ease with which he generates power makes his game look simple in a way that conceals its underlying difficulty.
What is the Els Foundation? The Els for Autism Foundation, founded in 2009 after Els's son Ben was diagnosed with autism, runs education and therapy programs for children with autism and has raised tens of millions for autism research.