The US Open playoff format is a two-hole aggregate-score playoff, and if the players are still tied after that, it moves to sudden death. Ryan Ballengee, founder and editor of Golf News Net, said he has been writing and broadcasting about golf for nearly 20 years while laying out the rule that decides a tied championship.
Ryan Ballengee and US Open
The setup is simple on paper. Two holes decide the championship on total score, not hole-by-hole wins, and only if that leaves the players level does the playoff continue one hole at a time.
That makes the US Open different from the Masters, where the playoff is sudden death, and from the British Open Championship and PGA Championship, where the playoff is a three-hole aggregate-score format with sudden death if needed. The four men's majors do not all use the same finish, so a tie at one championship can turn into a much longer test at another.
2008 U.S. Open playoff
The last US Open playoff came in 2008, when Tiger Woods beat Rocco Mediate on the 19th hole at Torrey Pines. That remains the clearest reminder that even a playoff designed to be shorter can still run deep into sudden death.
The history also shows how often the US Open has needed a tiebreaker. There have been 84 playoffs across the four men's major golf championships, including 33 US Open playoffs, 21 British Open Championship playoffs, 18 Masters playoffs and 13 PGA Championship playoffs since the PGA Championship moved to stroke play in 1958.
Masters, St. Andrews, Southern Hills
The most recent playoff across the group came at the Masters in 2025, when Rory McIlroy defeated Justin Rose on the first hole. The last British Open Championship playoff came in 2015, when Zach Johnson beat Louis Oosthuizen and Marc Leishman at St. Andrews. The last PGA Championship playoff came in 2022, when Justin Thomas defeated Will Zalatoris at Southern Hills in Oklahoma.
For a player tied at the US Open, the job is not to survive 18 holes or even three. It is to post the best two-hole aggregate, and if that still leaves no winner, to keep going until one player finally separates from the rest.
