Who knew that pro golf would prove the old saying true?
You really can’t buy happiness.
Three years and many billions later, money has mostly brought the golf world a heightened sense of disillusionment. Its fans are frustrated and its stakeholders are holding on for dear life — even while its players are richer than ever.
Few people have seen more of golf’s money in 2024 than Xander Schauffele. Schauffele, the winner of two majors and some $17.6 million in on-course earnings this season, enters this week’s BMW Championship second on the PGA Tour’s money list — and he’s threatening to add to his total.
For the uninitiated, the BMW is the second of three PGA Tour playoff events that will pay out a total of $100 million to players in August. As the best golfer alive not named Scottie Scheffler, Schauffele arrives in Colorado as one of the betting favorites to win not just this week’s tournament but also next week’s PGA Tour’s crown jewel, the FedEx Cup, whose $25 million first prize would more than double his season-long earnings.
By most objective measures, earning over $40 million in a calendar year qualifies as a pretty good thing, and Schauffele certainly isn’t arguing that point. In fact, by the PGA Tour’s standards, it would qualify as the most money earned in a single season ever. That’s comparable to a mid-tier starting quarterback in the NFL — pretty good for a sport with one-tenth of the NFL’s annual TV revenue.
But during an unusually expansive press availability on Wednesday at the BMW, Schauffele seemed confused by it all. Golf’s money has exploded, he argued, but it’s still nowhere near its pro sports counterparts.
“You look at the top-10 quarterbacks,” Schauffele said. “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.”
(Schauffele is correct. With two starts to go, Scheffler has made $29 million in 2024. Tenth place on the Tour’s single-season money list is Shane Lowry at a shade more than $5.5 million.)
“You look at the No. 1 quarterback, he’s getting $60 million and then the No. 10 quarterback is getting 52, and then No. 15 is getting 39 or 40.”
Schauffele’s point rings true, but he seemed to be hinting at a bigger hypocrisy. Why is chasing cash in golf considered greedy when the NFL hands out considerably more?
“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,” Schauffele said. “It’s interesting to me. I think maybe golf is a gentleman’s game and you’re not supposed to talk about money, but all the media wants to do is talk about money.”
Indeed, money is the third rail of the golf culture wars. New battles sprout up every day, but the overarching sentiment to emerge from it all is negativity. Chasing money on LIV is bad. The PGA Tour countering with more money is bad. Golf obsessing over money is bad. Those who take the money are bad. Those who thought themselves virtuous are bad. Everything is bad. And it’s all getting worse.
The irony of this sentiment, particularly for those like Schauffele, is that he hasn’t taken a dime from what’s considered a questionable source of income. (Yet.) The PGA Tour and PIF remain apart in their talks for a merger, and while the two sides have brokered an uneasy peace, that peace does not include Saudi money funneled into Schauffele’s bank account. (Again: Yet.)
Still, there are reasons for the bitter taste. The PIF is pro golf’s loudest financier, but the main goal of its investment appears to be purging an objectionable past from the public record and rehabilitating the Saudi image among wealthy Westerners. That’s not exactly “advancing golf’s noble cause.” And the PGA Tour claimed to be above the fray — only to go behind the public’s back to the Saudis and cut a deal of their own.
Human rights concerns aside, there are other problems with the billions the Saudis and PGA Tour have pumped into the game. In a sport that is supposed to be defined by its spirit of integrity and sportsmanship, stakeholders have used money to demonstrate the depths of their self-interest and greed. And for those who haven’t given in to the siren call, money has upended the public’s sense of a rational market. It’s one thing if Pat Mahomes makes $60 million during a historic season — he earned it — but Scottie Scheffler? He played the right season at the right time.
The good news is that the checks keep cashing either way, but perhaps that’s not the point.
“I think the players that make the most money don’t think about money because it’s just not the most important thing,” Schauffele said Wednesday.
“Winning $25 million would be really cool and really nice, but I don’t think it’s going to change my life, and I can tell you if I lose and play bad, I’m going to be pretty upset about playing bad and not being able to peak at the right time.”
In the end, the thing that matters most to Schauffele is almost refreshingly simple: Winning. Try as they might, you can’t put a price on that.
