[PHOTO: Michael Reaves]
The largest first-place cheque in women’s professional golf will double in 2024. The LPGA Tour announced overnight, Australian time, that the CME Group Tour Championship purse will increase by $US4 million to $US11 million, with the winner’s share rising from $US2 million to $US4 million, as part of a two-year extension.
It’s a reconciliation of a tense relationship between CME and the LPGA after chief executive and chairman of CME Group, Terry Duffy, took LPGA leadership to task during the 2022 Tour Championship after none of the 11 players who RSVPed to his pre-tournament event showed up. “It’s an embarrassment to a company of my size and an embarrassment to me personally,” Duffy told Golfweek a year ago. “I am exceptionally disappointed with the leadership of the LPGA. They better get their act together because they’re going to lose people like me over stuff like this.”
Instead, Duffy doubled down. This week’s $2 million winner’s prize is already tied with the U.S. Women’s Open, won by Allisen Corpuz at Pebble Beach, for the largest on the LPGA in 2023. And now that will double, an impressive incentive for players to be among the 60 to qualify during the season to play in the tour’s finale.
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In LPGA history, only two players have earned more than $US4 million in one year—Lydia Ko made $4,364,403 in 2022 and Lorena Ochoa earned $4,364,994 in 2007. Lilia Vu, who leads the 2023 moneylist with four victories, including two major titles, has earned $3,252,303 with only this week’s event at Tiburon Golf Club remaining.
“This partnership extension with CME Group is extremely important and underscores the growth and strength of the LPGA,” LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan said in a statement. “CME Group has been pushing the LPGA forward at every step of our evolution since 2011, and with this extension they are once again helping take the LPGA, women’s golf and women’s sports to unprecedented heights.”
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CME continues an impressive trend of increasing the purse of the Tour Championship. Since becoming the title sponsor in 2011, it raised the purse from $1.5 million to $2 million in 2013, up to $2.5 million in 2017, doubled to $5 million in 2019, then increased to $7 million in 2022, the same amount as this season. In addition, CME donates $US20,000 to St Jude Children’s Research Hospital for every hole-in-one on the LPGA, totalling $US3.2 million since the inception of the “Score 1 for St Jude” program in 2018.
