Into the Green
It is ridiculous that golfers are being paid like rock stars
LATER today, the winner of golf ’s final major of the year, the British Open, will raise the fabled Claret Jug. While it’s one of the most iconic accolades in sport (and comes with a check for almost $2 million), you don’t need to win trophies or titles to make a killing in the professional game anymore, not if you’re half-decent.
In last year’s PGA Tour, 114 players banked more than $1 million in prize money, including England’s Justin Rose, who earned $10 million for winning the FedEx Cup (in addition to the $8 million he made the rest of the season). American Ryder Cup player Tony Finau amassed more than $5.6 million in 2018 — and he hasn’t even won a single tournament. That’s $2 million more than the legendary Arnold Palmer won in prize money
in his entire career. Meanwhile, Californian Matthew Wolff collected $1,152,000 for winning his first title this year — the 3M Open in Blaine, Minn. — at just 20 years old.
What’s more, pro golfers are increasingly resembling NASCAR racers, with a glut of sponsors’ names dotted on their shirts, sleeves and collars. In 2017, Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy signed an apparel deal with Nike worth $200 million, followed by another to play with TaylorMade clubs for $100 million. Nice work if you can get it.
Any player that makes the top 50 of the PGATour’s money list can expect to earn at least $3 million a year in prize money alone, more than the average salary of players in the National Hockey League and not far off from the $4 million average seen in Major League Baseball. And while golfers still have some catching up to do with athletes in the NBA(where the average salary is over $7 million a year and rising), the fact that so many
players, most of whom aren’t even household names, can command such hefty paydays is ridiculous.
It’s even more baffling when you look at the game’s popularity compared with other sports. In 2018, 40 of the top 50 highest-rated televised sports events in the US were NFL games. The lowest-rated of those was the Los Angeles Rams versus the Chicago Bears, which pulled in 19.39 million viewers.
That’s still 6 million more viewers than watched the final round of that year’s Masters, won by Patrick Reed. There were even six football games that rated higher than the 2018 Masters, the biggest tournament in professional golf.
Meanwhile, fewer people than ever are playing golf, too. According to the National Golf Foundation’s latest Golf Industry Report, 24.2 million people (aged 6 and over) in the United States played golf on a course in 2018, significantly down from the 30-plus million in 2006. The number of actual rounds being played has dropped 4.8 percent year-on-year while nearly 200 golf clubs in America closed their doors in 2018.
The key difference is that golf fans have money, too. They’re the ones more likely to spend big on expensive equipment or a round at the very best courses the world has to offer. It’s not uncommon, for example, for a single golf club to cost $500, and if you want a round at Pebble Beach, home to the recent US Open, that will set you back $550. They don’t even throw in a golf cart for that either — that’s an extra $45. So it is then that sponsors and advertisers still flock to the game, paying through the nose for these fans’ eyeballs, even if there are fewer of them.
And so, professional golfers have hit the lottery, sometimes indulging themselves with all the profligacy of the rock fraternity, only without any of the associated coolness.
The world No. 1, Dustin Johnson, is said by his agent to own 30 bespoke suits, each costing around $6,000. England’s Ian Poulter has yet to win a major, and yet the garage at his Florida mansion is as big as most people’s houses, accommodating his collection of rare Ferraris. Another majorless player, Rickie Fowler, boasts an 11,000-square-foot, sixbed, nine-bathroom mansion with a private dock on the Loxahatchee River in Florida. He’s even got a par-3 hole in his garden.
In 2015, Rory McIlroy, aged just 26, dismissed the $10 million prize on offer for winning the FedEx Cup as neither here nor there. “That amount of money doesn’t sort of mean much to me anymore,” he shrugged. But then we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, if you visit McIlroy’s Twitter page, his profile reads: “I hit a little white ball around a field sometimes.”
It’s tongue in cheek, sure, but it’s bang on the money.