PGA Tour nearing $500m in prize money next season

Eight tournaments will offer $15m or more as battle with LIV Golf continues

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan playing at the JP McManus Pro-Am at Adare Manor Golf Club last month. Picture: Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile

The PGA Tour is closing in on $500m (€490m) in prize money for next season, with eight tournaments offering $15m or more and limited spots available for the postseason.

It will be the final time for a wraparound season that has nine tournaments starting on September 15, has a six-week break, and resumes in Hawaii in January before the season ends in August.

Only the top 70 players — down from 125 — will qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs, with players whittled down to 50 players for the second postseason event and 30 reaching the Tour Championship and competing for the FedEx Cup.

Starting in the autumn of 2023, players outside the top 70 will have six tournaments to try to earn full status for a calendar-year schedule that will start the following January.

The prize money for the 43 tournaments run by the PGA Tour is $428.6m, which includes four opposite-field events. The four majors had combined prize money of $61.5m last year. Still to be determined is whether purses will be increased for 2023.

The PGA Championship returns to Oak Hill outside Rochester, New York, in May. The US Open goes to Los Angeles Country Club for the first time, while the Open Championship returns to Royal Liverpool for the first time since 2014, when Rory McIlroy lifted the Claret Jug.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan previously disclosed that the elevated events with tournament hosts at Riviera (Tiger Woods), Bay Hill (Arnold Palmer) and Memorial (Jack Nicklaus) will have $20m purses. The World Golf Championship Match Play in Austin, Texas and two postseason events also will have $20m purses.

That includes the BMW Championship, for now the only postseason event that moves to different courses. Next year it will be at Olympia Fields in the south suburbs of Chicago.

The Players Championship purse is $25m, while the Sentry Tournament of Champions to start the new year at Kapalua nearly doubles to $15m.

All but five tournaments in the core of the 2023 season are at $8m or more.

The dates are roughly the same as this season, except for an extra week between the US Open and the Open. That allowed the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit to move from the last weekend in July to the last weekend in June — two weeks after the US Open and three weeks before the Open.

As for the bonus pools, an additional $145m is being offered — $75m for the FedEx Cup, $20m for the Comcast Business Tour 10 that pays out the top 10 players in the regular reason and $50m for the popularity contest known as the Player Impact Program.

Still to be announced are the three international events late in 2023 that will feature big purses and limited fields, starting with the top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings.

Monahan discussed several of the changes and prize increases in June, minus specific dates and scheduling. The tour released its new schedule one week after the Saudi-funded LIV Golf announced a 14-tournament schedule with $405m in prize money, all guaranteed because the 48-man fields have no cut in the 54-hole events.