GBR Pro | Exploring The Financial Reality Of Playing Professional Golf
Are You Teaching Kids Who Have Ambitions To Be On The Tours And They Ask You About The Financial Challenges Of Being A Pro? Here We Give You Some Answers For Them
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes.
Scottie Scheffler had a year of dominance on the PGA Tour winning over $29 million from playing. Did winning over $1 million in prize money guarantee a player exemption for next year's PGA Tour?
Golf is a game of money.
If we take recent history as our barometer, the first major increase in prize money is related to the “Tiger affect.” The surge of interest that Tiger Woods generated from sponsors and television pushed prize money to new heights.
The second wave comes in the aftermath of LIV Golf's creation in 2022. The Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) backed league sent shockwaves through the world of professional golf with the amount of money offered to players who moved to the new tour and the amount of money they were playing for in the scheduled tournaments.
While we think that nearly all players are now multi-millionaires, living a very pampered lifestyle while working a maximum of half the year, is that the reality?
To answer that question, we’ll take a look at the following areas:
The Growing Purses On The PGA Tour - How Many Players Won Over $1 Million In 2024?
The Team Behind a Player.
How Much Money Do Players Actually Pocket?
Do We See Something Similar In Other Tours?
The Growing Purses On The PGA Tour - How Many Players Won Over $1 Million In 2024?
Matt Wallace.
For those familiar with the DP World Tour, they’ll know that Matt Wallace is an English professional with six victories to his name.
Wallace hasn’t made quite the same impact on the PGA Tour.
Wallace’s best finish in 2024 on the PGA Tour was a T-4 at the CJ CUP Byron Nelson in May.
Why are we talking about Matt Wallace?
Wallace finished the regular season in position 114 after the BMW Championship in the FedEx Cup standings. He is the lowest-ranked player, with over $1 million playing this season.
Wallace can take some comfort from looking at his bank account. His play in the FedEx Cup Fall series didn’t secure him a top-125 spot and full playing rights for next season’s PGA Tour; he finished in a lowly 135 after the completion of the RSM Classic.
By contrast, Scottie Scheffler dominated the 2024 season. His form in the first half of the year did the damage. Scheffler added a second green jacket at Augusta National, and he won the Players Championship and the Arnold Palmer Invitational in consecutive weeks.
By the time he captured The Memorial in June, the season was done, and nobody was catching him.
If anybody thought Scheffler was human, he didn’t record another victory in June or July. Was a slump on? Scheffler captured Olympic Gold and, to cap it all off claimed the Tour Championship in late August to crown a season of utter dominance that arguably hasn’t been seen since Tiger Woods was in his prime. Scheffler pocketed $29,288,357 in official prize money and received an additional $25 million bonus for cleaning up the FedEx Cup.
Let’s put some context around how significant Scheffler’s on-course earnings are in 2024. Tiger Woods’ official career prize money stands at $120,999,166. In one season, Scheffler has won nearly a quarter of what Woods has earned in his career to date. We also need to remember that Scheffler is only 28.
Subscribe to GBR to read the rest of this article.
You’ll find out:
Where the legendary Jack Nicklaus ranks in the all-time money list rankings.
Where Tiger Woods’ first money list title in 1997 would place him in this year’s money list.
Who was the first player to win over $1 million on the PGA Tour
How a tour player’s earnings are divided and what he has left in his pocket.