TIGER MAKES BIGGEST IMPACT EVEN WHEN HE DOESN’T PLAY
Tiger Woods is making a bigger impact off the course than inside the ropes, and he was rewarded with a $15 million bonus from the PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program.
Woods won the award for the second straight year while playing slightly more often.
He was recovering from a car crash in 2021 and played only two rounds of the PNC Championship with his son, Charlie. This year, he played in three majors, making it to the weekend in two of them, finishing 72 holes only in the Masters.
Woods still ranked No. 1 in four of the five PIP categories. The exception was “TV Sponsor Exposure,” which is the length of time a player’s sponsor logos appear
on the screen during weekend rounds. He played only three of those.
Rory McIlroy finished second, as reported by The Associated Press two weeks ago, and received a $12 million
bonus. Jordan Spieth narrowly beat out Justin Thomas for third place — Spieth got $9 million, Thomas $7.5 million — with Jon Rahm ($6 million) in fifth.
Masters champion Scottie Scheffler was sixth ($5.5 million). The next four each received $5 million — Xander Schauffele, U.S. Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick, Will Zalatoris and Tony Finau.
Collin Morikawa won the British Open and a World Golf Championship last year and finished out of the money at No. 11 when the program rewarded only 10 players. Now the bonus pool has doubled to $100 million and expanded to 20 players.
He didn’t win this year and still finished 11th.
The pool was $106 million this year because the PGA Tour used two sets of criteria — the one used last year, and the new one going forward that uses “general population awareness” and “golf fan awareness” to replace Q-rating and social media.
Hideki Matsuyama, Cameron Young and Sam Burns would have been in the top 20 using the new model and were awarded $2 million. In all, 23 players received bonuses.
Year of the Kiwi
It would be a stretch to call 2022 the year of the Kiwi, but not by much.
Steven Alker capped off one of the more remarkable stories on the PGA Tour Champions. He had no status when he turned 50 last year with three months left in the season and still made it to the postseason. And then he carried that momentum into this year by winning the Charles Schwab Cup.
Alker won just over $3.5 million, nearly $1 million more than his career earnings on the PGA Tour, European tour and Korn Ferry Tour combined.
Lydia Ko gave New Zealand another big title when she won the CME Group Tour Championship with its $2 million prize to capture the LPGA Tour player of the year award and win another Vare Trophy for having the lowest scoring average.
Not to be overlooked is Ryan Fox.
He ended last year at No. 213 in the world and was nearly three years removed from his last victory. The Masters remained only a dream.
Eleven months later, the 35-year-old Kiwi was No. 2 in the DP World Tour Rankings behind Rory McIlroy until a pedestrian start in the season finale took him out of the mix to be Europe’s 1.