You could accuse officials at the PGA Tour of being like a crazy eBay user unable to keep from outbidding themselves when it comes to the purse at the Players Championship. The tour’s flagship tournament had laid claim to the most lucrative overall purse in professional golf starting in 2019 when Rory McIlroy won $2.25 million for his one-stroke win over Jim Furyk from an overall prize money payout of $12.5 million. The USGA matched that with its U.S. Open purse later that year, only to watch the tour up the ante at TPC Sawgrass to a purse of $15 million and a $2.7 million prize money payout for the winner starting in 2020.
Ahead of this year’s Players, the PGA Tour without prompting has one-upped themselves again, increasing the overall purse by 33 percent to $20 million while handing out to the winner a first-place prize of $3.6 million.
Just how big a payday is this? Here is the most recent prize money payout from the other three majors:
Masters: $11.5 million/$2.070 million
PGA Championship: $12 million/ $2.16 million
U.S. Open: $12.5 million/$2.25 million
Open Championship: $11.5 million/$2.070
Put another way, you can finish in foruth place this week at TPC Sawgrass and nearly make $1 million. Or how about this: You can finish 25th or better and make more money in one tournament than Arnold Palmer made in his winningest single season on the PGA Tour ($162,896 in 1971).
It’s impressive, too, when you consider the evolution of the Players prize money payout since the tournament’s inception in 1974.
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
The payday at TPC Sawgrass also now exceeds the previous biggest first-place check in pro golf, which had been the $3 million given to the winner of the DP World Tour Championship on the DP World Tour.
Here 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.