When Willie Park Senior won the first-ever Major, the 1860 Open Championship at Prestwick Golf Club, do you know how much prize money he received?
If you don’t know, have a guess. If you wish a clue – well it is a heck of a lot less than the $3.1 million that this year’s champion, Xander Schaufelle, won.
In fact, it is the whole $3.1million less. The first three winners of The Open won no money at all.
When Willie Park won the fourth Open to be played, he did receive a share of the purse. But his share of the purse of £10 was the same as everyone’s else – so, in effect, appearance money rather than prize money.
It was only the fifth Open that awarded money specifically for winning – Old Tom Morris, in securing The Open title for a third time, won £6 of that year’s purse of £15.
In those days £6 went a heck of a lot further than it does now. In purchasing power in today’s terms it represents about £990 or $1,250. But, to put it another way, the Open Champion now still wins, in real terms, about two and a half million times more than the 1864 winner did.
It is a similar story whichever era you choose to examine. The first US Open was held in 1895 and the winner, Englishman Horace Rawlins, received $150. That is the equivalent of $5,600 at today’s prices.
The Tiger effect?
Tiger Woods is credited with making golf more popular and marketable, driving up the prize money as a result. But the last of his Major wins, the Masters in 2019, won him $2.07 million, the equivalent of $2.56 million today. This year’s Masters winner won more than a million dollars than this in real terms.
These are Majors. Tiger’s day job was on the PGA Tour. He last topped the PGA Tour’s seasonal money list in 2013 when he won $8,553,439, the equivalent to $11,600,000 in buying power now.
His best year was 2007 when he won $10,867,052, which equates to $16,550,000 in present-day prices.
This season Scottie Scheffler topped the money list at $29,228,357 with a bonus $25 million on top for winning the FedExCup. To put this $29,228,357 in context, Tiger Woods’ official career prize money on the PGA Tour is $120,999,166. So in the past season alone, 28-year-old Scheffler accumulated a sum of prize money amounting to almost a quarter of Tiger Woods’ career total.
Jack Nicklaus is the only person with more Major titles than Tiger. He also topped the annual PGA Tour money list eight times. Jack Nicklaus earned from his 44 PGA Tour seasons total prize money of $5,734,031. He stands 332nd on the PGA Tour all-time earnings list.
If you fancy having a go at naming the top 10, try the golf quiz below:
The recent influx of money to tournament purses has been triggered by the entry of LIV Golf to the market. LIV have been luring players from the PGA Tour with large signing on fees and by putting on tournaments with huge purses.
Last season LIV put on 13 regular season events, each with $25m in prize money, plus the Team Championship with a purse of $50m.
Even those coming last in a LIV event get a sizeable sum in prize money. Whether all this money should be counted a “prize money” as such when coming last “wins” is a moot point. Surely some of it is, de facto, appearance money?
When are winnings not prize money?
But what counts as prize money is a grey area at times. The $25m Scheffler got for winning the FedEx Cup does not count officially as prize money, but as a “bonus payment” as it did not relate solely to a specific tournament.
The $8m he won from the $40m pot of the Comcast Business Tour Top 10 is also counted as a “bonus payment”, not prize money. The Comcast Business Tour Top 10 is a bonus pool for the top-10 performers during the PGA Tour's regular season, with the 10th-placed man earning $2m.
Scheffler earned more in bonus payments for his performance on the PGA Tour in 2024 than he did in “prize money”. But without winning all this prize money he would not have been in position to win all this amount in bonuses. ‘Success breeds success’ is the phrase that comes to mind.
This is a deliberate policy by the PGA Tour. It has has come up with various bonus pots designed to reward the very best, and most marketable, players so as to keep them on the PGA Tour.
Never before have the top PGA Tour players earned so much; never before have they earned so much more than the lesser Tour players. The Comcast Business Tour Top 10 pool of $40m is distributed among just 10 players; the $75m Tour Championship one is divided between 30 golfers.
By a combination of these methods, the PGA Tour has ensured that it pays out far more money in prize money and bonuses to its members than LIV Golf does to its own members.
LIV Golf paid out $375m in prize money at its tournaments in 2024 and $30m in seasonal bonuses. The PGA Tour paid out nearly $400m in its regular season events and nearly $60m in its Fall Series, as well as $115m in on-course performance-related bonuses.
But LIV Golf is comfortably the second highest payer of any tour. The DP World Tour comes third, but a long way behind. It will pay out around $125 million in prize money for its tournaments, including co-sanctioned ones, and $7 million in bonuses for the Race to Dubai and the Swings.
The PGA Champions Tour offers $70 million in total prize money and just over $2m in bonuses for its order of merit, the winner of which is the Charles Schwab Cup champion.
But there is another major generator of prize money – the Majors. There are four men’s Majors, which count towards the Race to Dubai and FedEx Cup, but which are run separately from the two main tours. They have a combined purse of $77 million.
So, dusting down Golf Monthly’s rusty abacus, with the total prize money and on-course performance bonuses, we reckon that the three main tours and the four Majors offer between them something approaching $1,100,000,000.
I wonder what Old Tom Morris would make of it? I hope he spent that £6 wisely.
