F1 also sucks as a comparison bc if costs a ton of money to put out a competitive car. R&D, parts, travel, engineers, pit crew, etc. The drivers NEED to have major manufacturers who have an interest in burnishing their brand in the glow of a F1 championship finance the operations. At times, you’ll get a Lance Stroll or Pastor Maldonado pay their way (or bring sponsorship deals with them) in to a lower performing team. I don’t think that model is analogous to PGL. Maaaaaybe if you have team TaylorMade, Titleist, Srixon, Callaway, Mizuno, PXG, etc. that could reflect F1 but it’s not necessary bc playing on tour costs 1/1,000 of competing in F1.
I get your point but none of these guys are remotely billionaires, let only “multi”. Tiger the only one to ever get there, but as we know…halved.
edit: I see this was addressed.
Arnie got close to being a billionaire. Rory will probably get there.
Where they come from now
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Exactly…not the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour is at the end of the supply road of golfers not the beginning of it.
Look, if the money is good enough at the PGL players will migrate there. It’s up to the PGL to put on a great product to attract sponsor dollars, but if they have all this money to hand out to players to fund 2,3,4 years of tournaments then the likelihood of success is pretty high in my opinion.
If you said to Brooks “you play on this tour, each tournament for $10mm and you only play ten of them, and you can play the majors” I would expect him to jump on that
The only question I would have is what the sponsors think, they are already so in bed with the pga tour I’m not quite sure how they would or could react.
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“I play golf because I watched XXX win the Masters / Open / US Open”. Oh… so that’s… that’s NOT the PGA Tour!
Super curious about how much the equipment guys pay the players, and what they would “give up” to switch to a third-party builder (probably the same guy they use now) and just play the free equipment that all the companies would give them (look up how companies treat unsponsored players).
Since pretty much 0 players play without an equipment sponsor I’m guessing they get paid a lot
Koepka, Reed, Casey are 3 in the Top 20 without sponsors. (Still really curious about what’s up with Koepka not accepting a sponsorship.)
I think for the “average journeyman” 75-125 it’s like $100-200k range, probably goes up as the player’s image is allowed to be used. No doubt that Rory gets millions from Taylormade each year, but, I don’t think it’s that many millions that he would be wedded to staying with them / whatever the drama.
150 guys on tour plus all the Korn Ferry guys,
The VAST majority of players (90%?) have a deal
Frankie signed a deal right after winning the open for instance, money talks
Sure, and for the vast majority of all players, a $200k deal is a big deal, if you make $5m a year and over half of that goes towards expenses/taxes/not into your pocket.
Let’s not toss taxes into this now. When someone makes a million dollars a year, who thinks, well it’s $600k reaaaalllly.
But yea they have agents caddies and travel to cover. Endorsements they keep a higher % for sure. But those are taxed too…That $200k is $120.
Yeah, I was trying to avoid the “taxes” topic, but often the going understanding is that roughly half of a PGA Tour player’s earnings (at least, for most players) disappears towards “expenses / other”. Think Bama might have posted about that on here.
Yea but so what? We keep barely more than half our earnings too.
I heard something similar on a recent podcast (can’t remember which). But thought the actual number that makes it into the bank after taxes/caddie/expenses was in the 1/4 to 1/3 of the money list #
My point on all of this, was that the big thing that the equipment deals provide is easy equipment access, maintenance, care, and the like. A tour van to walk into each week, etc etc. But it’s really about the people and “not having to worry about it” than about the check they send into your direct deposit. The checks aren’t really that big, but the freedom-of-mind is huge. But even that can be solved without a sponsor.
No, it provides money
Serious question. Without an equipment deal are these guys left helpless if they need help during tourney week? Possibly, but that’s tough to envision.
surely Koepka has access to the Mizuno truck for his irons during the week, and the TM truck for his woods. Paul Casey too (to trundle slightly further down the OWGR list).
if i remember correctly, there are also third-party independent tour vans that kinda float around too.
So if that’s true there is no added peace of mind by having a deal, it’s only about… the money
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