Every week on the PGA Tour, the best players in the world are battling it out in tournaments for large sums of money. For the player who is fortunate to win on the PGA Tour each week, the winner's share of the prize money payout can be a life-changing sum -- or it can be more money on top of an already-large stack.
How much money does a PGA Tour player get for winning a golf tournament?
A player doesn't earn the same amount of money for winning every PGA Tour event. The winner's share of a PGA Tour event depends on the size of that week's purse, which varies each week on a variety of factors, including:
- Importance of the tournament: Certain tournaments, like World Golf Championships and FedEx Cup playoff events, have minimum purses that increase steadily over time
- Quality of the sponsor: For regular events without special status, the purse is largely dependent upon the sponsorship available, but the minimum purse for most events is right around $6 million
- Position on the schedule: Events that have better dates on the calendar, either in terms of positioning, geography or host course, tend to have higher purses because they attract higher-quality players
The exception to this rule is what are dubbed opposite-field or additional events, which are played the same week as the World Golf Championships events and the British Open. These tournaments have a minimum purse of $3 million and are put on to offer maximum playing opportunities against limited-field events.
With the purse determined, now we know how much of the purse a PGA Tour winner gets. In most PGA Tour events, the winner earns 18 percent of the PGA Tour total prize-money payout. On a $10 million purse, that's $1.8 million. On a $6 million purse, that's $1,080,000. It can vary wildly, with PGA Tour purses ranging from $3 million to $15 million.
In some events, particularly the four World Golf Championships events, the winner actually earns less of the purse -- approximately 17 percent -- to make up for the no-cut nature of the event and to reward the players who earned their way into the event from all over the world but didn't finish well.
