Why four tournaments carry the weight
Golf has no postseason bracket. There is no elimination round that funnels a season into a championship game, so the sport settled instead on four annual events whose winners are remembered and whose fields are the strongest available. Careers are counted in majors, and a player with one major and modest form is discussed differently from a consistent winner with none.
The elevated status is partly historical and partly practical. These are the tournaments that assemble the deepest fields, receive the most attention and are contested on courses prepared to be more demanding than a normal week. The combination of a strong field and a hard test is what makes the result feel definitive.
It also distorts the calendar. Players plan preparation, rest and even equipment changes around four dates, and a season that produced several ordinary victories but no major contention will be judged as a disappointment. That is a strange way to measure a sport, and it is the way golf has chosen.
Four different tests, not four identical ones
The most useful way to understand the majors is by what they demand. One is played on the same parkland course every year, so local knowledge and a very specific set of shot shapes accumulate value. Another rotates through links courses where wind and firm, running ground make control of trajectory more important than distance.
A third is traditionally the most severe setup in the sport: narrow fairways, punishing rough and greens fast enough that a shot above the hole is a genuine problem. Recovery and patience dominate there, and the winning score is often close to par rather than deep under it. The fourth tends to be the most straightforwardly modern test, played on strong courses with a setup that rewards good scoring rather than pure survival.
Because the tests differ this much, the record book contains players who won repeatedly at one major and never contended at another. That is not a flaw in their game; it is evidence that golf's four peaks measure different things.
Setup is the hidden variable
Course setup decides difficulty far more than architecture does. Pin positions, rough height, green speed, fairway firmness and even the mowing pattern can change a hole's scoring average by more than a shot, and the people making those decisions are effectively choosing the character of the tournament.
This is why the same course can produce a birdie shootout one year and a war of attrition the next. It is also why complaints about setup surface every major week: firm greens that reject well-struck approaches sit on a line between demanding and unfair, and where that line falls is a judgement, not a measurement.
For a viewer, setup is the most useful thing to notice early in the week. If approach shots are bouncing forward and putts are running past, the winning score will be modest and the contenders will be the players who miss in the right places. If the course is soft and receptive, expect a low number and a leaderboard full of aggressive iron play.