PGA Tour Money A Bit Excessive?
Players not keen on Points 'head start' / Mixed Reviews on Ryder Cup Italy Host Course
Hi all! 👋
Thanks to all of you who read this week in week out - and enjoy it.
If you’re enjoying The Mulligan, please do us a quick 20 second favour and forward this mail to even just one mate that hasn’t read it. We’ll appreciate it!
This week in The Mulligan:
The Ridiculous amount of PGA Tour Prize Money on offer 💰
Our 4 best-handpicked equipment deals
Our (short) Weekly Pub Quiz! 🍻
This week’s best bets for the BMW PGA Championship
Snippets including Trump’s horrendous pitching action, Rory throwing his toys, a number of players not for the Tour Champs format & mixed reviews on Ryder Cup host course in Italy
Before you go a look at a classic video of the Top 10 luckiest shots on Tour 🍀
Free Roll of a cool drone video of East Lake (over 9 million views already!)
But before we jump in, here are some interesting stats from the past week.
Big OWGR Movers
Here are the biggest movers over the last week on the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR)
📈 Shugo Imahira 149 —> 108
📈 Ryo Ishikawa 158 —> 136
📈 Adrian Meronk 217 —> 154
📈 Joseph Bramlett 254 —> 155
📈 Nicolai Hojgaard 394 —> 182
Last Week’s Winners’ Cheques
💰 Patrick Cantlay - $15 000 000 (PGA Tour) 😳
💰 Nicolai Hojgaard - $576 741 (European Tour)
💰 Shugo Imahira - $200 464 (Japan Tour)
💰 Joseph Bramlett - $180 000 (Korn Ferry Tour)
💰 Maja Stark - $71 243 (Ladies European Tour)
💰 Hugo Leon - $39 411 (Challenge Tour)
💰 Thomas Levet - $35 650 (Legends Tour)
Last Week’s Last Place Cheques
💰 $395 000 - PGA Tour
💰 $9 313 - European Tour
💰 $3 780 - Korn Ferry Tour
💰 $2 235 - Japan Tour
💰 $1 282 - Ladies European Tour
💰 $701 - Legends Tour (*no cut)
💰 $672 - Challenge Tour
$15 Million - Am I still Dreaming?? 💭
I don’t quite think it’s sunk in yet just how big the payouts are. The FedEx Cup Bonus Pool totals $70 million for the season.
$15 million to Patrick Cantlay alone.
Let’s just do a few comparisons here quickly…I researched the total prize money for each of the below tours and their ENTIRE seasons as follows:
2021 Challenge Tour = $6 813 351
2019/20 Sunshine Tour = $6 865 004 ($14 365 004 if including the $7.5 million limited field Nedbank Challenge which the vast majority of the Sunshine Tour players do not qualify for - hence we’re working off the $6.85 million figure)
2019 Ladies European Tour = $15 247 152
*2020/2021 Korn Ferry Tour $28 850 000 (*Cross-year extended 21 month season)
2021 LPGA Tour = $71 200 000
2020/21 PGA Tour (excl FedEx Cup bonuses) = $370 050 000!!
Hear me out - I realize that the PGA Tour is the biggest and best tour in the game and every professional strives to compete in the USA. But will there ever be a ceiling to this prize money? What will be bonus be in 10 years - $25 million? Once a player (PGA Tour in particular) has reached a certain level in their careers, is the hugely inflated prize money even still that ‘necessary’ to keep them playing the PGA Tour?? You would think the convenience, comfort, enjoyment, superb organization and other knock-on perks playing the PGA Tour would be sufficient.
The players are competing against the best of the best already. So would earning say $10 million for the year be much harder to swallow than the $22 638 505 that Cantlay has just earned!? Let me think about it for a minuu…..NO.
Also - even with a 21 month season for the Korn Ferry Tour, their prize money is still more than 12 times less than the PGA Tour. Their ‘normal’ tournament purses are $600 000. The PGA Tour’s is give or take $7.5 million.
Should there be such a huge gap between the feeder tour and the main tour? Again I’m not saying narrow the gap to being hardly much different, but boost KFT to $1 million minimum and lower the PGA’s to a standard purse of say $5 million. Bloody hell $5 million sounds like a pittance in comparison!
But for graduated Sunshine Tour players such as Erik Van Rooyen and Dylan Frittelli - yes the big prize money is very important and a massive jump. Hats off to them for making it to the big stage. After all, the Sunshine Tour’s entire season’s prize money is less than a 50th of the PGA Tour’s. The full season also totals less than some of the individual tournament’s prize money on the PGA Tour!
If only we all had a similar attitude to that of Cameron Smith!
The PGA Tour are happy to pay the big figures though in order to keep the best players on board. And there ain’t no chance of them pulling in the reins anytime soon either. The other tours around the world (even European Tour) are not able to come close and subsequently attract a weak strength of field most weeks.
And the cream of the crop unfortunately are not interested unless there’s an appearance fee involved or hosting their national Open (this applies more so to the players who are ‘past their prime’ though so to speak).
Thirty years ago the gap was much narrower between that of the PGA Tour and European Tour in terms of a season’s prize money. Now it’s substantial. It’ll be interesting to see if or how much more that gap widens over the next 10 years too.
🔥 This Week’s Hottest Equipment Deals 🔥
Nike React Infinity Pro Shoes less 33% - Check deal here
Adidas Tour360 XT-SL Shoes less 42% - Check deal here
Puma Ignite PROADAPT Shoes less 40% - Check deal here
Skechers GO GOLF Mojo Shoes less 33% - Check deal here
Pub Quiz
Three questions. Three Answers for each. A bit like The Chase except you get bugger-all in return. Just your trivial pride! (Answers at the bottom)
What was the original name of the Korn Ferry Tour?
A - Ben Hogan Tour
B - Buy.com Tour
C - Reebok Tour
Which of these clubs was the longest back in the day?
A - Brassie
B - Mashie
C - Niblick
Name the only non-American player to have won more than 25 PGA Tour events?
A - Greg Norman
B - Ernie Els
C - Vijay Singh
Our Best Bets this Week
We’ve kept a record of our best bets to date as well as profit & loss. Check our detailed record here
Our value picks for this week’s BMW PGA Championship are as follows.
BMW PGA Championship
Christiaan Bezuidenhout EW @ 30/1 (Place Bet Here - Paying 8 Places)
Alex Noren EW @ 20/1 (Place Bet Here - Paying 8 Places)
Branden Grace EW @ 40/1 (Place Bet Here - Paying 8 Places)
⚡️ Bet £10 (€10), Get £30 (€30) In Free Bets
✅ Golf Snippets
The dire pitching action of President Donald Trump. No chance he’s won any club championships pitching like this!
Rory getting a bit fed up with everything after his attempted swing changes and results not panning out the way he had planned in 2021.
Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy & Patrick Cantlay join the list of players that don’t like the points based ‘head start’ at Tour Championship. Most are in favour of returning to the format from 3 years ago where the Tour Championship had boosted points (2000) on offer, four times that of a regular PGA Tour event. Definitely not the head start of 10 shots on the field though.
There have been some mixed reviews from some of the European Tour players for the 2023 Ryder Cup host course in Italy. Marco Simone GC hosted the Italian Open last week.
Wait a Second!
Check out this old classic of the Top 10 luckiest shots. Some unfathomoble and some just plain crazy!
Answers to Pub Quiz
- A (Ben Hogan Tour)
- A (Brassie)
- C (Vijay Singh)
Interested in sponsoring our newsletter?
Thank you for your interest in The Mulligan - a weekly newsletter for golf enthusiasts. Find out more here.
👍 How did we do?
With your feedback, we can improve the letter. Click on a link to vote:
👍 Interesting and fun. Thanks!
Free Roll
Check out this cool 2 minute drone video of Tour Championship host course East Lake (it’s already had over 9 million views in 3 days!)