This page was created by Collin Hardwick.
Context Toward an Answer
How are golfers paid?
The PGA/LPGA Tour compensates players on a merit-based system. Unlike professional north American team sports such as football and basketball, the PGA does not sign athletes to contracts in return for a salary. Rather, athletes must prove their skills in a series performance known as the Qualifying Tournament – colloquially called ‘Q School’ – to earn a PGA Tour Card. A tour card awards the recipient PGA/LPGA Tour playing privileges.Upon earning the right to enter the field for a PGA/LPGA Tour tournament, players will compete with their colleagues over a four-day span – often Thursday to Sunday – on the basis of scoring. Scoring in professional golf is calculated by the difference of a course’s ‘par’ with that of a player’s stroke total. The lowest stroke total and difference to par is awarded the highest ranking in the field and vise-versa.
The higher ranked an athlete is in the field, the more money that individual will be pegged to earn over the tournament. However, it is common practice of PGA/LPGA Tour events to enforce a ‘cut’ midway through the tournament (Rose). The ‘cut line’ – often called ‘the line’ – is a scoring threshold the event coordinators deem appropriate at the conclusion of Friday’s round. There is no standard rule of thumb for enforcing a cut line, but it often eliminates half of the field. The calculation of finding the cut line will vary from event to event on the PGA/LPGA Tour.
Those below the cut line will be eliminated from play and awarded no financial compensation for their appearance and performance at the PGA/LPGA Tournament event. Those above the cut line will be invited to play in the Saturday and Sunday rounds with a guaranteed paycheck at the weekend’s conclusion.
Money to compensate weekend players is pooled together in a communal pot called the ‘purse’ (Rose). The purse is divided between all weekend players with top scorers received the bulk of funds and bottom performers receiving much less (Rose).
Who funds the purse?
According to Forbes Magazine, television broadcast rights funded 60 percent of PGA/LPGA Tour event purses in 2012 (Rose). The final 40 percent is comprised of event sponsors who aim to earn revenue back from mediums such as advertisements, ticket sales, parking, and concessions (Rose).How is the purse divided?
The purse has a standard and rule on its division among competitors from top to bottom, however, exceptions are seldom made in occasion of a smaller weekend field as seen in the 2011 TOUR Championship in which case all player – except the victor – make slightly above their typical win-share percentage.Both the PGA and LPGA have a fixed percentage figure on victors and the last place finisher. Champion win-share percentages for the PGA is 18 percent of the purse but a lower 15 percent for the LPGA. Both leagues award the last place weekend finisher .02 percent. All seeded players in between are awarded percentages of incremental steps to bridge the discrepancy from top to bottom (Rose).
In the event of a tie, prize money for those finishing positions are added up and divided equally among the stalemate finishers.
Purse Discrepancies
Majors:
Professional golf tours have a clear-cut hierarchy, much like tennis, giving favoritism to specific events. These events have been dubbed ‘Majors’ as a result. Major tour events for both men and women’s professional golf is listed as such.- PGA: U.S. Open, British Open, The Masters, PGA Championship
- LPGA: ANA Inspiration, U.S. Women’s Open, PGA Championship, British Open, Evian Championship
The PGA and LPGA Tours are played primarily in North America and more specifically the United States. For this reason, the home nation’s championship (The U.S. Open) is fit as a benchmark for the highest level of play – not to mention it exists on both tours.
Graph by ESPN (Saffer)
From 1964 to 2000, the U.S. Open purse gap thinned, but in the last two decades it has reversed course (Saffer). Recent data shows the men's champion raking in $2.16 millipon on a $12 million purse, while the women's champion donned a meager $900,000 from the $5 million pot (Herrington).In the highest level of professional golf, the U.S. Women’s Open champion earns 42 cents to every dollar compared to the PGA’s U.S. Open champion – that’s for accomplishing the same exact task, mind you.
Non-majors:
Events outside of majors are just simply called ‘events on tour,’ and sometimes called ‘non-majors.’To calculate the average purse for non-majors, we will find the number of tour events and subtract the number of majors. Next, we will need to find the non-major tour’s total purse by adding all non-major event purses together. The last step will be dividing the non-major purse over the number of non-major events. This figure will give us the average purse for PGA and LPGA non-major events.
Total Tour Purse – Total Majors Purse = Total Adjusted Purse (TAP)Number of Tour Events – Number of Major Events = Number of Non-Major Events
TAP / Number of Non-Major Events = Average non-major purse
(Top photo by Chris Trotman / Ghetty Images)