This has been quite the spell for those who like to number crunch around the world of professional golf. The Players Championship, taking place this weekend, carries a prize purse of $20m with $3.6m to be bestowed on the winner. By Sunday evening, three tournaments in a row played in Florida will have handed out a combined $40m on the basis of leaderboard placings. Arnold Palmer’s PGA Tour winnings totalled $1.9m.
Those at the summit of this sport have never had it so good. Still, many believe the largesse associated with the PGA Tour in particular has become obscene, to the point where golfers will naturally lose all grip on reality. The theory was only endorsed as umpteen players at least flirted with Saudi Arabia and its bid for a breakaway tour. Phil Mickelson, without any apparent irony, blasted the PGA Tour for “obnoxious greed” before admitting his Saudi dealings were all about “leverage”.
The Saudi scheme actually made little commercial sense – which perhaps doesn’t matter when you are seeking to rebrand a kingdom – but the willingness of sportsmen to indulge it on the basis of guaranteed tens of millions has been an inauspicious sight. The PGA and DP World Tours viewed the disruption plan as serious enough to not only close ranks but to beef up their financial offering. Yet again, the players win.
But are golfers now paid too much? “We are paid as much as people are willing to pay us, I guess,” says Rory McIlroy. “You can say the same thing about footballers or any other athletes. You could argue that they’re paid too little or too much, but you’re only worth what people are willing to pay you.
“I’d say at this point we’re fairly paid. The top guys earn a lot of money, and I think that’s right. Even the guys that are not at the top, they still earn a really, really good living. I think it’s a good structure.” McIlroy is one of many players who collect small fortunes via off-course endorsements and private business interests. Palmer did likewise.
Although a conflicting viewpoint is not publicly available – do not bite the hand etc – it does exist. Aaron Rodgers denied a report that he has agreed a four-year contract worth $200m in the NFL but the figure was easy to believe. In the context of golf, Tiger Woods has earned slightly more than $120m across his career from the PGA Tour, $25m more than Mickelson.
McIlroy’s PGA Tour career winnings are $60m. Golfers do genuinely look at the guaranteed salaries of US team sports stars and wonder if their deal is a poor one. The difference, of course, lies in exposure: Woods would be recognised in any city, which cannot legitimately be said about most golfers in the world’s top 20.
“When I turned pro, if you turned to me and said you’d give me all my expenses and pay my mortgage plus the average wage on top of that, I would have had a great life,” says Pádraig Harrington. “It has changed so much but we don’t have control of that. A lot of the Irish professionals before me had to get jobs when they finished on tour.
“A lot of it is relative. Winning £1,000 in the 1960s could buy you a house. Winning $2m won’t get you much in Florida. I don’t begrudge the guys who have the prize money going up. Careers don’t last long. There is not a simple answer to the question; there is no way you can say we don’t get paid too much but that’s what the market dictates. At the very top it looks astronomical but look at football.”
Harrington rightly points out that the costs associated with playing a full schedule in Europe means one may not need to go particularly far down the DP World Tour’s money list to find players who aren’t enjoying a lavish lifestyle.
It is fitting, of course, that Woods will be inducted into golf’s Hall of Fame in a week where the sport’s class of 2022 scrap over a record prize fund at Sawgrass. Largely through increased television interest, Woods single-handedly drove up his sport’s value.
“He made professional golf at the highest level a very, very attractive thing to be involved in,” says McIlroy. “TV paid more. Sponsors paid more. And then all of a sudden, his peers and colleagues and other players were getting paid more because of that. I think we all have to be very thankful for Tiger Woods.”
