How far down the pecking order can a pro consistantly place and still earn a comfortable living? Say, $125- 150K a year or so after expenses? And maybe for how long. I know some “pros”, those who teach at clubs and such, do okay, but how about only the pros in competition.
Thanks,
mamgeorge
The 2006 PGA earning list shows that:
215 players earned over $100k
210 players earned over $125k
203 players earned over $150k
196 players earned over $175k
192 players earned over $200k
From these amounts expenses should be deducted. I suspect something like $1500-2000 per tournament is minimal - say $40k per year.
I’ve heard it said (can’t find a cite) that almost every PGA tour player with a “card” (i.e. fully qualified for every event) will make a million dollars in a year. Between actual winnings and sponsorships (clubs, ball, glove, etc.), they make a ton of bucks. They do pay for their own travel, but that is just airfare and hotel. Cars are provided, as is food at the course.
They also pay fees to agents & other advisors, including coaches, caddies, and personal assistants.
Golfers in the top-20 may have some national endorsement deals or deals with companies that sell golf equipment or sportswear, but this is not a significant source of income for folks further down the pecking order.Most pro golfers don’t stay at hotels, they have housing provided for them at the venues.
I guarantee that every guy with a PGA card is not making a million a year. I’d be surprised if it’s more than half. I’d further estimate that about a dozen women golfers made a million last year. Same for tennis.
Kinda-sorta, maybe. You might get your card and make no money at all during the year. A better way to look at it is how much the guy made last year who was the lowest on the list to get his card for this year. I think it’s the top 125 who get “fully exempt” cards for the next year. In 2006, that was Darren Clarke, and he made $660k. (Note: There are many other ways to qualify for your card, but that is one of the main ways.) That’s not $1M, but it’s close, and they might be able to make it there if you count endorsements. That’s gross, of course, so you’d have to deduct expenses (don’t forget they pay the caddies) to get to what the OP is asking about.
I think you’re underestimating what these guys get. You don’t have to be in the top 20 to get a sweet endorsement deal. Chris DiMarco was #53 on the money list last year (#35 on the World Golf Rankings now), and I’m sure he’s got plenty of endorsements.
Every golfer on the PGA tour has endorsement deals.
Here’s an article that shows that virtually all of the top 50 golfers earn more than $1M in endorsements alone.
Okay, but what I said was that I’d guess about half of the PGA players had total earnings of over $1 million. That means guys ranked roughly 125 and above. I don’t dispute that guys ranked 26-50 can make over a million in endorsements. I don’t even dispute that about many of the the guys ranked between 50 and 100. What I’m saying is that when you get down to 125 and 150 and 175, those guys don’t have six or seven-figure endorsement deals. Those guys are struggling to make the cut week to week
The OP’s question was how far down the pecking order can you go and still earn a good living. **Lamar **responded by saying that he believed all players with a PGA card made at least a million. I’m fairly certain that isn’t the case.
Having said that, I’ll posit that if you do earn a tour card and can play well enough to finsih at least 8-10 tournaments a year, you can make the $125k to $150k that the OP asked about. So you could be in the 150-200 range in terms of rank and net that much from playing and endorsements.
No, you said half the guys with their card:
There aren’t 250 players with fully exempt tour cards. It’s the top 125 players on the money list from last year, plus the top 15 or so from the Nationwide Tour, plus the top 30 players from Q-school. Maybe a few others, but that’s it. As I already noted, **Lamar **got it about right, he was just thinking of all the people who qualify for a tour card again next year.
You guys are being parochial and looking just at the (US) PGA Tour. On the world money list , 368 players earned over $200k in prize money. In tennis, the top 116 men made over $200k.
That few in tennis? Wow.
Now there’s a workout. I wonder how many calories the top winners burn during a championship match, like Wimbledon or the US Open. I wonder how long it takes for them to recover.
This article says there are about 200 players in any given year with a PGA tour card. If I stick to my original claim of ther being about 125 guys who reach $1,000,000 in annual earnings with endorsements, then let me correct my estimate of “about half” of card holders to a more precise 62.5%.
But we’re getting further and further away from the OP’s question. How high in the pecking order to you have to rise to make $125k to $150k a year? The answer seems to be somewhere in the 175 to 200 range,
Someone raised the issue of expenses earlier. This article says “It can easily cost more than $100,000 to play a season of tour golf.”
That article is also a good illustration of how much competition there is for those bottom fifty slots on the pecking order. I have to imagine there are many other professions where you can make $125 to $150k without having to rise so high as being in the top 200 for your profession nationwide.
Not too surprising. As I repeatedly argued in that old Woods/Federer thread from a few months back, there’s more of a luck element in golf than there is in tennis. Tennis is also single elimination match play, a rarity in pro golf anymore, which is significant in a variety of ways (e.g. after the halfway mark of a tournament in golf half the field is still around making money. In tennis 1/8th of the field is still around). Upshot is that if you graphed tournament results on a bell curve for both sports you’d find the “long tail” for tennis players to be much longer (i.e. fewer realistic contenders who last long into the tournament) than you would in golf (more contenders, more players lasting into the final day and thus taking in a decent check). A golfer may very well make a good living on the few top 10’s he may score in a year.
I don’t have much input to offer on the subject other than a book suggestion: Paper Tiger by Tom Coyne is mostly about one guy’s effort to land on the PGA tour by devoting himself solely to golf for one year, but it has a thorough explanation of the various tiers of pro golfers. It’s pretty amazing the stuff some people will put themselves through just to play golf… it’s not an easy lifestyle unless you’re among the elite.