The Scottie Scheffler train rolled on last week, as the golfer finished one stroke ahead of Collin Morikawa at the Memorial Tournament for his fifth win of the season. The title was worth $4 million in prize money and pushed his 2024 winnings to a new PGA Tour record of $24 million.
Scheffler has now set a record three straight years on the PGA Tour with $14 million in 2022, $21 million in 2023 and $24 million in 2024—and this year, there are still three months of golf to be played. The huge payouts are a function of Scheffler’s dominant play, as well as massive increases in purses on the PGA Tour in response to the launch of LIV Golf.
Scheffler has 12 top-10 finishes in 13 events in 2024 and 40 top-10 finishes since the start of the 2022 season, including 11 wins. Next best on the PGA Tour during that time: 28 top-10 finishes by Xander Schauffele and seven wins by Rory McIlroy. Scheffler has been ranked No. 1 in the world for a cumulative 91 weeks, which is sixth all-time and just six weeks from passing Nick Faldo; Tiger Woods is first at 683 weeks.
The PGA Tour increased its prize money last year in response to LIV poaching its player roster. The Tour handed out more than $560 million in 2023, including $100 million for the Player Impact Program (PIP) and $75 million for the Tour Championship, up $140 million from the prior year; the PIP and Tour Championship bonuses are not counted as official prize money.
The PGA Tour bumped the total purse to $20 million and winner’s check to $4 million for most of its 14 newly dubbed “elevated” events—it marked a 47% increase from the payouts at those 14 events in 2022. The total purse and first-place purse matched what LIV put in place. In 2023, LIV paid out $405 million over 14 events, including $115 million in team prize money.
Scheffler is a huge favorite this week for the U.S. Open at Pinehurst at +320, followed by McIlroy (+1000) and Schauffele (+1200), according to DraftKings.
At 27 years old, Scheffler already ranks seventh on the career PGA Tour prize money list at $66.6 million.
Scheffler’s play has raised his off-course earnings from sponsors to roughly $20 million last year from Nike, TaylorMade, Veritex, NetJets, Rolex and GolfForever. He ranked No. 27 in Sportico’s list of the 100 highest-paid athletes for 2023 with $52.3 million. Ten golfers cracked the list and earned $670 million from prize money, sponsorships, appearance fees and LIV signing bonuses, led by Jon Rahm at $203 million.