Letter: Golfers earning their roll in green
The Masters will be played this weekend, and it’s the No.1 tournament to almost all touring pros. In 2016, the payout was $10 million, with first prize of $1.8 million going to Danny Willett. Three golfers who tied for sixth place made $311,000 each, which exceeded what Tom Watson earned 40 years ago as the PGA’s annual money list leader ($310,000).
Curtis Strange was the first golfer to exceed $1 million in tour winnings, in 1988, and Rory McIlroy’s caddie made that much in last year’s FedEx Cup.
The jump to the big leagues came after David Duval made $2.5 million in 1998. The next year Tiger Woods (you remember him) topped out at $6.6 million, and in 11 of the 17 years since 1999 the annual money list leader has pocketed in excess of $8 million.
Kind of makes you wish you’d spent a little more time at the range, huh? But consider: these guys are playing 7,400-plus-yard courses with bowling alley fast greens, and still shooting, you know, 64, 68, 67, 66. Heck, I haven’t seen numbers like that since they posted my junior year mid-terms.
They boom canons off the tees and throw darts at the pins, and a single missed three-footer can cost them six figures. Try that at your weekly Nassau.
No, hard as it may be to accept, these guys are just really good and earning it, but they do all owe a “hat’s off” to Tiger. He’s helped create more millionaires than McDonald’s.
Herb Zimmerman
Bluffton
This story was originally published April 3, 2017 at 4:44 PM with the headline "Letter: Golfers earning their roll in green."