This week’s BMW Championshipthe second of three FedEx Cup Playoff events, boasts a total purse of $20 million to be divided among the 50 PGA Tour players who made it past last week’s first round of the playoffs at the FedEx St. Jewish Championship.
However, the $20 million is nothing compared to what is at stake next week, reaching much of the total purse of $100 million for the FedEx Cup will be distributed to the 30 players who make it to the Tour Championship. The top prize at East Lake for the champion is $25 million, and the top five will receive a total of $56 million.
What does that do for Xander Schauffele, currently second in the FedEx Cup points race and in line for the $12.5 million runner-up prize for the over $17 million he’s already earned this year and whatever he adds to it in this week at the BMW Championship?
“I mean it’s interesting, the media has been an interesting thing for me the last two or three years,” Schauffele said at the BMW Championship this week, a reference to the way money has been talked about in golf after LIV Golf began signing players like Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau to guaranteed big money deals two years ago.
“There’s a reason behind bloated purses, and a lot of people have talked about money. The news I read is funny, it’s really negative. It’s painted really negatively in golf, which is fine. I think people can hard to hate on anything these days.
“But when I look at other sports, when someone gets a $300 million contract, there are all these positive comments about how someone got their bag or they worked so hard to get this and they deserve it, things like that. it’s interesting that i think golf is a man’s game and it’s not supposed to be about money, but all the media wants to talk about is money.
“Us players, I think the players who make the most money don’t think about money because it’s just not the most important thing.”
Schauffele went on to say that taking home the $25 million first prize would be “cool” and “nice,” but not life-changing. The clear implication was that the life-changing stuff already happened this year at the PGA Championship and Open Championship, where he became the first golfer since Jordan Spieth in 2015 to win two majors in the same year.
When asked to compare the money in golf to quarterbacks in the NFL, Schauffele made an interesting point
“It’s different,” he said. “The money around the top players is skewed. If you take the top 10 quarterbacks, you’re going one-on-one, which isn’t really fair, I’d say. Scottie [Scheffler] has won seven times. I think that’s including Olympic gold. … And he has done significantly more than everyone else.
“If you look at how much the 10th has earned, the 10th best player in the world has made, it’s not going to sniff how much Scottie has earned. It just shows you how well Scottie has played in these big tournaments .You look at the No. 1 quarterback, he gets $60 million and then the No. 10 quarterback gets $39 or 40 (million) So it’s like there’s a lot more money in football with TV and everything that surrounds it, it is difficult to compare it [on] one because Scottie has just been so much more elite and I think he deserves everything he gets.”
Here’s what Schauffele was alluding to:
No. 1 QB in 2024 Earned Money (Joe Burrow): $55 million (average earned across contract)
No. 1 golfer in 2024 made money (Scheffler): $29.1 million
No. 10 QB in 2024 Money Earned (Deshaun Watson): $46 million
No. 10 golfers in 2024 made money (Shane Lowry): $5.8 million
It’s an interesting point by Schauffele that speaks more to the meritocratic nature of golf than anything else. There is a pool of several hundred million players to play for each year, and some years the No. 1 and No. 10 players can be much closer than they are this year. But as Schauffele said, Scottie has just been that much more elite.
It’s a strange thing in golf that a player has to go and serve their team every year and nothing on the course is guaranteed. Pro golf is unique from that point of view, at least non-LIV pro golf.
And it seems more correct to say that there has been a focus on the negativity in the game around money guaranteed money than money in general. People are frustrated because of the disruption of the traditional meritocratic nature of the sport. Whichever side you’re on as a fan, it’s hard to argue with that truth.
Regardless, the money guarantee isn’t something Schauffele needs to worry about either. With nearly $57 million in career earnings, he is eight rounds away from adding another eight figures to that number and closing the gap Scheffler has opened for him in both wins and money earned in 2024.