This week's BMW Championship, the second of three FedEx Cup Playoff events, boasts a $20 million total purse, to be divided up between the 50 PGA Tour players who made it past last week's first round of the playoffs at the FedEx St. Jude Championship.
That $20 million is nothing compared to what's at stake next week, though, when much of the $100 million overall purse for the FedEx Cup will be distributed to the 30 players who make it to the Tour Championship. The top prize at East Lake for the champion is $25 million and the top five will receive a total of $56 million.
What does that do for Xander Schauffele, currently second in the FedEx Cup points race and in line for the $12.5 million second prize to go with the over $17 million he's already earned this year and whatever he adds to that this week at the BMW Championship?
"I mean, it's interesting, the media has been an interesting thing to me the last two or three years," Schauffele said at the BMW Championship this week, a reference to the way money in golf has been talked about after LIV Golf began signing players like Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau to guaranteed big-money deals two years ago.
"There's a reason behind inflated purses and a lot of people have been talking about money. The news that I do read, it's funny, it's really negative. It's painted really negatively in golf, which is fine. I think people like to hate on anything these days.
"But when I look at other sports, when someone gets a $300 million contract, there's all these positive comments about how someone got their bag or they've worked so hard to get this and they deserve it, things like that. It's interesting to me. I think maybe golf is a gentlemen's game and you're not supposed to talk about money, but all the media wants to do is talk about money.
"Us players, I think the players that make the most money don't think about money because it's just not the most important thing."
Schauffele went on to say that taking home the $25 million first prize would be "cool" and "nice" but not life-changing. The clear implication was that the life-changing stuff already happened this year at the PGA Championship and Open Championship, where he became the first golfer since Jordan Spieth in 2015 to win two majors in the same year.
When he was asked to compare the money in golf to quarterbacks in the NFL, Schauffele made an interesting point
"It's different," he said. "The money that's around the top players is skewed. You take the top 10 quarterbacks, you're going one-on-one, which is not really fair, I'd say. Scottie [Scheffler] has won seven times. I think that's including Olympic gold. ... And he's made significantly more than everyone else.
"If you look at how much 10th has made, the 10th best player in the world has made, it's not going to sniff how much Scottie has made. That just shows you how well Scottie has played in these big tournaments. You look at the No. 1 quarterback, he's getting $60 million and then the No. 10 quarterback is getting $52 (million) and then No. 15 is getting $39 or 40 (million). So it's like, obviously there's way more money in football with TV and everything that's surrounding it. It's hard to compare the one [on] one because Scottie has just been that much more elite, and I think he deserves everything that he's getting."
Here's what Schauffele was referring to:
No. 1 QB in 2024 money earned (Joe Burrow): $55 million (avg. earned across contract)
No. 1 golfer in 2024 money earned (Scheffler): $29.1 million
No. 10 QB in 2024 money earned (Deshaun Watson): $46 million
No. 10 golfer in 2024 money earned (Shane Lowry): $5.8 million
It's an interesting point by Schauffele that speaks more to the meritocratic nature of golf than anything else. There's a pool of several hundred million players can play for every year, and some years, the No. 1 and No. 10 players might be much closer than they are this year. But like Schauffele said, Scottie has just been that much more elite.
It's a strange thing in golf that a player has to go earn their keep every year and that nothing on the course is guaranteed. Pro golf is unique from that standpoint, at least non-LIV pro golf.
And it seems more correct to say that the negativity in the game around money has been focused on guaranteed money than money in general. People are frustrated because of the disruption of the traditional meritocratic nature of the sport. No matter which side you're on as a fan, it's difficult to quibble with that truth.
Regardless, the guarantee of money is also not something Schauffele needs to worry about. With nearly $57 million in career earnings, he's eight rounds away from adding another eight digits to that number and closing the gap that Scheffler has opened up on him in both wins and money earned in 2024.
