Pop quiz: Can you name the all-time leader in prize money earned at the Players Championship? And how much has this tour pro banked over the tournament’s five-plus decades?
The answer entering this week’s event at TPC Sawgrass is … drum roll please … Scottie Scheffler, who has taken home $9.2 million in prize money ($9,286,450 to be specific).
Why exactly are we making a semi-big deal out of this? Well, while notably having won the tournament twice, Scheffler has played in the event a grand total of FIVE times. (By way of comparison, Rory McIlroy is second in all-time earnings with $8.2 million but he has needed 15 starts to get there, and Sergio Garcia is third with $5.9 million in 22 starts.)
Suffice it to say, it speaks to the notion that the purse in the PGA Tour’s flagship event in recent years has been mighty large—and continues to be so this week. The overall purse for the 52nd Players is $25 million (the largest total on tour) with the winner claiming a $4.5 million first-place prize money payout.
By way of comparison, at the first playing of the Players in 1974, Jack Nicklaus claimed $50,000 for the victory from an overall purse of $250,000. That was the 54th of 73 PGA Tour titles Nicklaus won in his career, and the $50K payday matched the largest check the Golden Bear had earned in a tour event up to that point in in the then 34-year-old’s career. This year, so long as you make the cut, you’ll make at least $50K.
Nice work if you can get it.
Here’s how the prize money payout has grown over the years, including the exponential increases in the last decade, fueled in part by the rise of LIV Golf and the overall bump in PGA Tour paydays.
Year: Total Purse/First place
1974: $250,000/Jack Nicklaus, $50,000
1982: $500,000/Jerry Pate, $90,000
1987: $1 million/Sandy Lyle, $180,000
1993: $2.5 million/Nick Price, $450,000
2000: $6 million/Hal Sutton, $1.08 million
2007: $9 million/Phil Mickelson, $1.62 million
2014: $10 million/Martin Kaymer, $1.8 million
2018: $11 million/Webb Simpson, $1.89 million
2019: $12.5 million/Rory McIlroy, $2.25 million
2021: $15 million/Justin Thomas, $2.7 million
2022: $20 million/Cameron Smith, $3.6 million
2024: $25 million/Scottie Scheffler, $4.5 million
Here then is the prize money payout for any golfer making the cut this week at TPC Sawgrass. We’ll update the post after the end of the tournament to list how much each player walked off with from Ponte Vedra Beach.
