Like pretty much every other tournament in professional golf, the Open Championship got a pretty significant purse bump this year, making this year’s winner’s check the largest in tournament history.
While it’s not quite as large as the prizes for the PGA Tour’s designated events or LIV Golf Invitationals, the winner of the 151st Open at Royal Liverpool will take home an impressive $3 million. Not to mention possession of the Claret Jug for the year.
Entering Sunday’s final round, Brian Harman is in prime position to claim both of those prizes, holding a five-shot lead over Cameron Young. That $3 million winner’s check is nearly $1 million more than the combined winnings from Harman’s first two PGA Tour victories. His career-best earnings from one event was actually from a month ago when he took home $1.78 million for finishing T2 at the Travelers Championship.
The first-place prize is also $500k more than Cameron Smith took home last year at St. Andrews after the tournament received an overall purse bump of 18 percent to $16.5 million. Two years ago, Collin Morikawa won $2.07 million for his victory at Royal St. George’s, marking a nearly 50 percent increase in winner’s share since then.
The Open has the smallest purse and winner’s share of the four majors in 2023, three of which had less prize money than the Tour’s designated events. Most of those events have purses of $20 million with $3.6 million going to the winner, which the U.S. Open matched. LIV Golf events have $25 million purses (including $5 million for the team competition) with $4 million going to the winners. The Players Championship this season had the largest purse and individual winner’s share in professional golf history at $25 million and $4.5 million, respectively.
Harman tees off in the final group at 9:15 a.m. ET, and you can see a full purse breakdown below.
2023 Open Championship purse
1 – $3,000,000
2 – $1,708,000
3 – $1,095,000
4 – $851,000
5 – $684,500
6 – $593,000
7 – $509,500
8 – $429,700
9 – $377,000
10 – $340,500
11 – $310,000
12 – $274,700
13 – $258,300
14 – $241,800
15 – $224,800
16 – $206,600
17 – $196,600
18 – $187,500
19 – $179,600
20 – $171,100
21 – $163,100
22 – $155,000
23 – $146,700
24 – $138,500
25 – $133,800
26 – $128,000
27 – $123,300
28 – $119,100
29 – $113,900
30 – $108,000
31 – $104,500
32 – $99,200
33 – $95,700
34 – $93,000
35 – $89,800
36 – $86,200
37 – $82,200
38 – $78,000
39 – $75,200
40 – $72,800
41 – $69,800
42 – $66,400
43 – $63,400
44 – $59,800
45 – $56,400
46 – $53,400
47 – $51,300
48 – $49,300
49 – $47,000
50 – $45,900
51 – $44,900
52 – $44,100
53 – $43,400
54 – $42,800
55 – $42,100
56 – $41,500
57 – $41,100
58 – $40,800
59 – $40,500
60 – $40,200
61 – $40,000
62 – $39,800
63 – $39,600
64 – $39,400
65 – $39,200
66 – $38,900
67 – $38,600
68 – $38,300
69 – $38,000
70 – $37,800
71 – $37,675
72 – $37,550
73 – $37,425
74 – $37,300
75 – $37,175
76 – $37,050