It is no secret that top sports people, including golfers, can earn a lot of money. Not only do they earn money from taking part in (and hopefully winning) tournaments, but they also earn a lot of money from sponsorship deals, in fact these days they often earn more money from that than their actual sports earnings!
But regardless of sponsorship deals it can be interesting to look at money that golfers can earn from tournaments. In order to check on the top level of earnings that a golfer might be able to achieve, we have looked back on the earnings of Tiger Woods from when he turned professional.
Obviously looking at someone who was so successful will give a good idea of the maximum earnings a golfer can strive for not including sponsorships. But also in Woods’ case, you can see the effect of the bad years that he has had due to his personal situation and injuries.
Most tournaments that you take part in as a golfer offer prize money to all levels of participants – the bigger the tournament the higher the prize money of course.
Dropping just one extra shot in a tournament can lose you a large chuck of money so it is no wonder golfers need to be concentrating at all times and don’t like to have any distractions when playing.
So here are the annual tournament earnings of Tiger Woods from when he turned professional in 1996:
2015 – $448,598
2014 – $108,275
2013 – $8,553,439
2012 – $ 6,133,159
2011 – $ 660,238.00
2010 – $ 2,090,477.00
2009 – $ 9,434,813.00
2008 – $ 5,875,000.00
2007 – $ 12,217,052.00
2006 – $ 11,291,563.00
2005 – $ 10,870,522.00
2004 – $ 6,925,471.00
2003 – $ 7,373,413.00
2002 – $ 8,789,225.00
2001 – $ 6,846,108.00
2000 – $ 10,318,321.00
1999 – $ 6,816,584.00
1998 – $ 2,241,116.00
1997 – $ 2,376,831.00
1996 – $ 906,170.00
Looking at the annual earnings for other golfers it seems that the top golfer of the year earns around $8-12m depending on how many events they play and how dominant they are in those events.
For example in 2015 Jordan Speith was dominant with earnings of over $12 million, up with Tiger’s top earnings.
However, in 2014 Rory McIlroy was the top earning golfer but he actually ‘only’ earned over $8 million.
