Should Scottie Scheffler go on to win the Tour Championship on Sunday afternoon and claim the FedEx Cup title, he’s going to look at the 5 1/2 holes he played Sunday morning as a key to victory. The World No. 1 resumed the weather-delayed third round at 9:45 a.m. with a one-shot advantage over Xander Schauffele, then proceeded to make four birdies to finish with a 66. That lifted him to 23 under for the tournament and gave him a six-shot lead on Schauffele (who played the finish in one over) and Rory McIlroy.
The tricky part now for Sheffler is not getting too far ahead of himself given what’s on the line. For all the banter this summer about rapidly rising prize money payouts in professional golf, it remains hard to wrap your head around the stakes at East Lake Golf Club. The winner of what is turning into a marathon day on Sunday will earn $US18 million for his victory.
Let’s repeat this: $18 million.
By comparison, for their entire PGA Tour careers, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, winners of 25 majors and 135 tour titles, earned a combined $7,595,888.
Technically speaking, the money on the line in Atlanta is not tournament prize money, but rather the payout for the $75 million FedEx Cup bonus pool that players are receiving for their finishes in the season-long points race. No player’s career earnings will increase as a result of their performance in the 2021-22 season finale.
But it is big and impressive. And the difference between finishing first and second is its own incredibly large figure: $11.5 million. This means that there could be a putt made on the 72nd hole that is worth more than what Jack and Arnie made their entire tour careers.
Pretty heady stuff.
Here then is the prize money payout for each golfer in the final FedEx Cup standings after the conclusion of the Tour Championship. As with regular PGA Tour events, money is split equally among players if there are ties for different places in this last event of the 2021-’22 PGA Tour season. We’ll update this list shortly after Sunday’s finish to include individual names with their earnings.
One additional note: Every player in the FedEx Cup top 150 earns some distribution from the bonus pool. It’s why the list below has far more names than just the 30 competing in the Tour Championship.
Win: $18,000,000
2: $6,500,000
3: $5,000,000
4: $4,000,000
5: $3,000,000
6: $2,500,000
7: $2,000,000
8: $1,500,000
9: $1,250,000
10: $1,000,000
11: $950,000
12: $900,000
13: $850,000
14: $800,000
15: $760,000
16: $720,000
17: $700,000
18: $680,000
19: $660,000
20: $640,000
21: $620,000
22: $600,000
23: $580,000
24: $565,000
25: $550,000
26: $540,000
27: $530,000
28: $520,000
29: $510,000
30: Will Zalatoris, $500,000
