Pop quiz: Can you name the all-time leader in prize money earned at the Players Championship? And how much has this tour pro banked over the tournament’s five-plus decades?
The answer entering this week’s event at TPC Sawgrass is … drum roll please … Scottie Scheffler, who has taken home $9.2 million in prize money ($9,286,450 to be specific).
Why exactly are we making a semi-big deal out of this? Well, while notably having won the tournament twice, Scheffler has played in the event a grand total of FIVE times. (By way of comparison, Rory McIlroy is second in all-time earnings with $8.2 million but he has needed 15 starts to get there, and Sergio Garcia is third with $5.9 million in 22 starts.)
Suffice it to say, it speaks to the notion that the purse in the PGA Tour’s flagship event in recent years has been mighty large—and continues to be so this week. The overall purse for the 52nd Players is $25 million (the largest total on tour) with the winner claiming a $4.5 million first-place prize money payout.
By way of comparison, at the first playing of the Players in 1974, Jack Nicklaus claimed $50,000 for the victory from an overall purse of $250,000. That was the 54th of 73 PGA Tour titles Nicklaus won in his career, and the $50K payday matched the largest check the Golden Bear had earned in a tour event up to that point in in the then 34-year-old’s career. This year, so long as you make the cut, you’ll make at least $50K.
Nice work if you can get it.
Here’s how the prize money payout has grown over the years, including the exponential increases in the last decade, fueled in part by the rise of LIV Golf and the overall bump in PGA Tour paydays.
Year: Total Purse/First place 1974: $250,000/Jack Nicklaus, $50,000 1982: $500,000/Jerry Pate, $90,000 1987: $1 million/Sandy Lyle, $180,000 1993: $2.5 million/Nick Price, $450,000 2000: $6 million/Hal Sutton, $1.08 million 2007: $9 million/Phil Mickelson, $1.62 million 2014: $10 million/Martin Kaymer, $1.8 million 2018: $11 million/Webb Simpson, $1.89 million 2019: $12.5 million/Rory McIlroy, $2.25 million 2021: $15 million/Justin Thomas, $2.7 million 2022: $20 million/Cameron Smith, $3.6 million 2024: $25 million/Scottie Scheffler, $4.5 million
Here then is the prize money payout for any golfer making the cut this week at TPC Sawgrass. We’ll update the post after the end of the tournament to list how much each player walked off with from Ponte Vedra Beach.
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Win: $4,500,000
2: $2,725,000
3: $1,725,000
4: $1,225,000
5: $1,025,000
6: $906,250
7: $843,750
8: $781,250
9: $731,250
10: $681,250
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Dom Furore / Golf Digest
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Dom Furore / Golf Digest
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Courtesy of TPC Sawgrass
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Courtesy of TPC Sawgrass
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Courtesy of TPC Sawgrass
8 / 8 
Previous Next Pause Play false Public TPC Sawgrass: Stadium Ponte Vedra Beach, FL 4.6 26 Panelists
- 100 Greatest
- 100 Greatest Public
- Best In State
TPC’s stadium concept was the idea of then-PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman. The 1980 design was pure Pete Dye, who set out to test the world’s best golfers by mixing the demands of distance with target golf. Most greens are ringed by random lumps, bumps and hollows, what Dye called his “grenade attack architecture.” His ultimate target hole is the heart-pounding sink-or-swim island green 17th, which offers no bailout, perhaps unfairly in windy Atlantic coast conditions. The 17th has spawned over a hundred imitation island greens in the past 40 years. To make the layout even more exciting during tournament play, Steve Wenzloff of PGA Tour Design Services later remodeled several holes, most significantly the 12th, which he turned into a drivable par-4, something Dye was never a fan of. View Course
11: $631,250
12: $581,250
13: $531,250
14: $481,250
15: $456,250
16: $431,250
17: $406,250
18: $381,250
19: $356,250
20: $331,250
21: $306,250
22: $281,250
23: $261,250
24: $241,250
25: $221,250
26: $201,250
27: $193,750
28: $186,250
29: $178,750
30: $171,250
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31: $163,750
32: $156,250
33: $148,750
34: $142,500
35: $136,250
36: $130,000
37: $123,750
38: $118,750
39: $113,750
40: $108,750
41: $103,750
42: $98,750
43: $93,750
44: $88,750
45: $83,750
46: $78,750
47: $73,750
48: $69,750
49: $66,250
50: $64,250
51: $62,750
52: $61,250
53: $60,250
54: $59,250
55: $58,750
56: $58,250
57: $57,750
58: $57,250
59: $56,750
60: $56,250
61: $55,750
62: $55,250
63: $54,750
64: $54,250
65: $53,750
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
