Every week on the PGA Tour Champions, which plays approximately 30 weeks of the year, a 50-plus player earns a big amount of money. However, the amount of money a PGA Tour Champions player gets for winning a tournament changes from week to week.
Generally speaking, the winner of a PGA Tour Champions event gets 15 percent of the total purse. However, the total purse changes by week.
On the PGA Tour Champions, there are basically two tiers of tournaments.
The first tier consists of all the events that aren't major championships. These events typically range in purse from $1.8 million to $2.4 million, though there are exceptions. These tournaments are all pretty similar, in that there are 78 players competing in a 54-hole, no-cut event. The winner gets 3 percentage points less of the purse compared to the PGA Tour because pay is guaranteed to all players who complete the tournament, so the money has to spread out a bit more compared to the PGA Tour events that pay to the top 65 players and ties after 36 holes.
The difference in purses can be explained as a way of attempting to differentiate tournaments, but tournaments also have different purses depending on the contract that the tournament and its title and lead sponsors sign with the PGA Tour Champions. Depending on when the sponsor signed the contract, where the tournament is on the schedule and what the tournament hopes to accomplish with their sponsorship, the tournament in question will have a different purse.
The second tier is the five major championships on the PGA Tour Champions schedule. The five major championships all have big purses, though they vary between the tournaments. The two majors owned and operated by PGA Tour Champions -- the Regions Tradition and the Kaulig Companies Championship -- pay 15 percent to the winner. The other three majors feature purses paying 18 percent to the winner. These events have purses of $2.5 million to $4 million.
While the PGA Tour Champions winner's share is generally the same on a percentage basis, the purses of tournaments do vary across the schedule, meaning players are competing for money that is typically commensurate with an event's status on the Tour slate.
