PGA Tour players found out last week about the size of their respective slices of the tour’s new economic pie.
For a select few, it will be a mouthful, but the others certainly won’t go hungry.
Initial equity grants of about $930 million will be distributed to 193 players, according to an outline that Tyler Dennis, the tour’s chief competitions officer, disclosed Wednesday on Golf Channel’s “Golf Central” show. Players were informed of their individual amounts via letters from commissioner Jay Monahan. The money comes from an initial $1.5 billion investment by Strategic Sports Group in the new for-profit PGA Tour Enterprises, which will be run separately from the tax-exempt PGA Tour.
The equity awards will be made to four groups of players, with the stars reaping the biggest chunks. Tiger Woods reportedly will top the list with $100 million, and Rory McIlroy will merit $50 million, according to calculations first reported by James Corrigan in London’s The Telegraph newspaper. Players are being rewarded for their loyalty to the PGA Tour amid a wave of defections to LIV Golf in the past two years.
Here is the breakdown:
Group 1: 36 players will divide $750 million based on their past five years of play. “Career points” will weigh various factors such as number of years on tour, and victories in such high-profile events as the majors, Players and FedEx Cup plus Tour Championship appearances.
Group 2: 64 players classified as “steady performers and up-and-comers” will divide $75 million based on FedEx Cup points compiled during the past three years.
Group 3: 57 players will divide $30 million based on their top-125 FedEx Cup finishes.
Group 4: 36 players known as “past legends” – Jack Nicklaus, et al. – will split $75 million based on a career-points formula.
Under the program, the payments will vest over an eight-year period, at which point players can sell their equity in PGA Tour Enterprises. READ MORE and MORE
Rory McIlroy is making an about-face and will return to the PGA Tour’s Policy Board after having resigned last fall, Ewan Murray of London’s The Guardian newspaper reported, citing sources. The move was initiated when Webb Simpson resigned with the stipulation that McIlroy be restored to the board. Meanwhile, the tour remains in a stalemate in negotiations with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which finances rival LIV Golf, as they work toward completing the “framework agreement” of last year. READ MORE
Russ Cochran went 11 years between starts on the PGA Tour, but he finally played in his 600th tournament. Cochran, 65, the 1991 Western Open champion and a five-time winner on the Champions Tour, teamed with Eric Cole in the Zurich Classic of New Orleans last week. They missed the cut by two strokes after consecutive rounds of 69 in the better-ball/foursomes formats. Cochran’s son Reed caddies for Cole, and the three are frequent playing partners at home in Tequesta, Florida. READ MORE
Ernie Els, Trevor Immelman, Geoff Ogilvy and Camilo Villegas were added to the International team staff for the Presidents Cup, captain Mike Weir announced. The biennial matches against America’s top professionals will be played September 26-29 at Royal Montreal Golf Club in Quebec, Canada. READ MORE
Max Homa, Tom Kim and Kevin Kisner have joined Tiger Woods’ Jupiter Links Golf Club team for the TGL league that plans to launch January 7 on ESPN. READ MORE
Maddie Meyer, PGA of America via Getty Images
Miles Russell, who recently became the youngest player to make the cut at a Korn Ferry Tour event, is taking his game to the next level.
Russell, 15, of Jacksonville Beach, Florida, has accepted an exemption to play in the PGA Tour’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship this fall. The Bermuda event will be played November 14-17 at Port Royal Golf Course.
It is the first exemption in a deal in which the AJGA’s reigning player of the year gets to compete in a PGA Tour event.
Russell tied for 20th at the KFT’s Lecom Suncoast Classic on April 21, earning a spot in last week’s Veritex Bank Championship. He shot 4-under 138 but missed the cut at Texas Rangers Golf Club in Arlington, Texas.
In a teleconference last week, he outlined what he called “a busy summer” of competition: defending his title at the Junior Players, plus the U.S. Amateur, U.S. Junior, Western Amateur, North & South Amateur and U.S. Open qualifying among them.
Russell is not the only youngster playing up these days.
Kris Kim, 16, of England, accepted an invitation to play in the PGA Tour’s CJ Cup Byron Nelson this week at TPC Craig Ranch in McKinney, Texas.
Kim won the 2023 British Boys' Amateur and is sponsored by the CJ Group. His mother, Ji-Hyun Suh, briefly competed on the LPGA in the late 1990s.
In perhaps a taste of things to come, Kim defeated Russell, 5-and-4, in last September's Junior Ryder Cup. READ MORE
Nelly Korda withdrew from last week’s LPGA’s JM Eagle LA Championship one day after winning the Chevron Championship for her LPGA record-tying fifth consecutive victory.
Korda, 25, the top-ranked women’s player in the world, cited “the mental and physical challenges of four events in the past five weeks.”
The announcement suspended her effort to establish the outright record for consecutive titles on the women’s tour. Her next scheduled start will be at the Cognizant Founders Cup on May 9-12. READ MORE
Amy Olson retired after a decade on the LPGA Tour. Olson, who played in the 2023 U.S. Women’s Open while seven months’ pregnant, officially retired after her maternity leave, she announced via social media. Olson, 31, the 2009 U.S. Girls’ Junior champion, won an NCAA-record 20 college tournaments at North Dakota State. She never won on the LPGA, infamously making a double bogey on the 72nd hole of the 2018 Evian Championship to lose to Angela Stanford by one stroke. Olson also finished second in the 2020 U.S. Women’s Open. “I’ve had to come to terms with that,” she told Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols. READ MORE
TAP-INS
Frankie Capan III wasn’t sure what he had just done in Thursday’s first round of the Korn Ferry Tour’s Veritex Bank Championship, but he sensed that it was something special. “What was that?” he asked after holing a 5-foot par putt on the 18th hole at Texas Rangers Golf Club in Arlington, Texas. “58” someone nearby answered. It also was a course record, clipping the 59 shot by Scottie Scheffler during a round with friends in 2020 at the par-71, 7,010-yard layout. Capan’s 58 was one stroke shy of Cristobal Del Solar’s record shot earlier this year in Colombia and the 13th sub-60 round on the KFT, the PGA Tour’s top developmental tour. Capan finished fourth. READ MORE
Bernhard Langer, a two-time Masters champion who missed this month’s event at Augusta National after undergoing surgery to repair a torn Achilles tendon, will return to competition this week after a three-month absence. Langer, 66, who leads the Champions Tour in all-time victories with 46, will play at the Insperity Invitational, which begins Friday in The Woodlands, Texas. “Statistically, they say that guys win the most tournaments from age 50 to 55 on the PGA Tour Champions, and then they kind of drop off. I’m trying to continue to prove them wrong.” READ MORE
The G4D Tour will make its U.S. debut this week before the PGA Tour’s CJ Cup Byron Nelson in McKinney, Texas. The G4D Tour, a partnership between the European Tour Group and the EDGA (formerly the European Disabled Golf Association), will stage a two-day tournament at TPC Craig Ranch for 10 of the world’s best disabled golfers. READ MORE
Guy Kinnings, the recently promoted CEO of the European Tour Group, has been elected chairman of the International Golf Federation and will oversee golf’s participation in the Paris Olympics. His IGF role runs through 2027. READ MORE
Compiled by Steve Harmon