19th Hole
The great “golfers don’t get paid enough” debate
Do professional golfers stack as much cash as they ought to? Walter Hagen, Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, and Sam Snead would certainly say so (even allowing for inflation).
Even so, everything is relative, and (on court/course/field) athlete compensation is a function of ad dollars, sponsorships, and television deals, as we all know. In golf, it’s pretty simple tale we’ve heard time and again: Purse sizes swelled during the Tiger Woods era as sponsorship dollars flooded into the sport and more people tuned in.
Today’s PGA Tour pros are the beneficiaries…except they’re still being short-changed, GolfWRX member MaddMaxx suggests in a forum thread he dedicated to the topic.
Jordan Spieth: $34.5 million
Salary/bonuses: $5.5 million
Endorsements: $29 million
So he made 5.5 million. The pay of a 3rd string baseball player, a soccer player who shows up.
A fairly good hockey player…..
Which sport so you think is the lowest/highest paid when considering:
the talent/ability required
hours of practice
pressure situations(stress)
have a life outside the sport
life after the sport
I think golf is the most underpaid.
Your-away argues the opposite
“He will also be making millions much later in life than any other sport, soccer players are generally done by there mid 30’s, he will just be reaching his prime. I think good pro golfers have it pretty good.”
RSinSG offered some perspective.
“It’s all about putting people in stadium seats or in front of a TV. Ticket sales = more salary. A group of athletes who are even more underpaid are all female athletes. They play just as hard, practice just as long but since the viewership is so small the pay is proportional.”
Seth Pistol called to mind the athletes with arguably the worst lot
“Salary is based on demand, not based on skill. not only ticket sales but TV contracts, endorsement opportunities, merchandising, etc etc etc. Golfers get paid pretty well in my opinion. Think about the hundreds of Olympic athletes who scrape by. These athletes are no less talented or dedicated but their sport is “unpopular” and therefore $$$ is non-existant. Those are the guys who really get screwed.”
MattyO1984 writes
“I am of course biased in all of this because Golf is my number one sport but in comparison when you consider that the winner of the tennis US Open received, $3.7 Million this year, compared to the $2.16 Million that Koepka got, I think you can argue that golfers, in the world of sport, are underpaid.”
Raynorfan1 thinks this is lunacy
“This is crazy talk. In the HISTORY of mens tennis, only 54 guys have made $10M (in aggregate for their career)…compared to 174 in golf. Tiger Woods has made almost exactly the same amount as Roger Federer ($~110M), but Federer has had the more dominant career.
“Then look down to #10 on the career money lists – for golf, it’s Steve Stricker at $43 million. For tennis, its BORIS freaking BECKER. Stricker has won basically nothing (no majors). Becker won 6 slams and made a total of $25M.”
And these are just culled from the first 15 replies. And the thread is only a day old! In other words, the thread is blowing up and the takes are red hot.
How can you not have a strong opinion on the issue of player compensation? Join the discussion!
19th Hole
‘Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight’ – LPGA pro offers candid take following rough AIG Women’s Open finish
An opening round of 77 left LPGA pro Jenny Shin with a mountain to climb at last week’s AIG Women’s Open.
However, fighting back with rounds of 69 and 67, Shin found herself six shots off the lead and just outside the top 10 heading into Sunday as she went in search of her first major victory.
Shin, who won the US Girls’ Junior at just 13, couldn’t back those rounds up on Sunday, though, and after playing her opening nine holes of the final round in level par, she then bogeyed three holes coming home to slip down the leaderboard and eventually finish T23.
Taking to X following the final round, Shin offered a frustrated and honest take on how she was feeling, posting: “Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish.”
Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish
— Jenny Shin (@JennyShin_LPGA) August 3, 2025
Shin has made 11 cuts in 13 starts on the LPGA Tour this season, but has been plagued by frustrating Sunday finishes throughout the year. Shin ranks 102nd on tour this year out of 155 for Round 4 scoring in 2025.
Miyu Yamashita won the 2025 AIG Women’s Open with a composed final round of 70 to win her first major of her career by two strokes.
Cameron Young won the Wyndham Championship on Sunday for his first victory on the PGA Tour.
Young dominated all weekend at TPC Sedgefield, running away from the pack to win by six strokes and put himself in contention for a Ryder Cup pick in September.
Ahead of the event, the 28-year-old switched to a Pro V1x prototype golf ball for the first time, following recent testing sessions with the Titleist Golf Ball R&D team.
Interestingly, Young played a practice round accompanied by Fordie Pitts, Titleist’s Director of Tour Research & Validation, at TPC Schedule early last week with both his usual Pro V1 Left Dot ball and the new Pro V1x prototype.
Per Titleist, by the second hole Young was exclusively hitting shots with the Pro V1x prototype.
“We weren’t sure if he was going to test it this week, but as he was warming up, he asked to hit a couple on the range,” Pitts said. “He was then curious to see some shots out on the course. Performance-wise, he was hitting tight draws everywhere. His misses were staying more in play. He hit some, what he would call ‘11 o’clock shots,’ where again he’s taking a little something off it. He had great control there.”
According to Titleist, the main validation came on Tuesday on the seventh hole of his practice round. The par 3 that played between 184 and 225 yards during the tournament called for a 5-iron from Young, or so he thought. Believing there was “no way” he could get a 6-iron to the flag with his Left Dot, Young struck a 5-iron with the Pro V1x prototype and was stunned to see the ball land right by the hole.
“He then hits this 6-iron [with the Pro V1x prototype] absolutely dead at the flag, and it lands right next to the pin, ending up just past it,” Pitts said. “And his response was, ‘remarkable.’ He couldn’t believe that he got that club there.”
Following nine holes on Tuesday and a further nine on Wednesday, Young asked the Titleist team to put the ProV1x balls in his locker. The rest, as they say, is history.
Rickie Fowler fired an opening round of one-under par on Thursday at the Wyndham Championship, as the Californian looks to make a FedEx Cup playoff push.
Fowler is currently 61st in the standings, so will need a strong couple of weeks to extend his season until the BMW Championship, where only the top 50 in the standings will tee it up.
Heading into the final stretch of the season, Fowler has made an equipment switch of note, changing into new iron shafts, as well as making a switch to his driver shaft.
The 36-year-old revealed this week that he has switched from his usual KBS Tour C-Taper 125-gram steel shafts to the graphite Aerotech SteelFiber 125cw shafts in his Cobra King Tour irons, a change he first put into play at last month’s Travelers Championship.
Speaking on the change to reporters this week, Fowler made note that the graphite shafts offer “something that’s a little easier on the body.”
“I mean, went to the week of Travelers, so been in for, I guess that’s a little over a month now. Something that’s a little easier on the body and seemed to get very similar numbers to where I was at. Yeah, it’s gone well so far.”
Fowler has also made a driver shaft change, switching out his Mitsubishi Diamana WB 73 TX for a UST Mamiya Lin-Q Proto V1 6 TX driver shaft in his Cobra DS-Adapt X, which he first implemented a couple of weeks ago at the John Deere Classic.
However, according to Fowler himself, the testing and potential changes are not done yet.
“Probably do some more testing in some different weight configurations with them once I get some time. Yeah, I feel like we’re always trying to search, one, to get better but are there ways to make things easier, whether that’s physically, mentally, whatever it may be. So yeah, I thought they were good enough to obviously put into play and looking forward to doing some more testing.”
Fowler gets his second round at TPC Sedgefield underway at 7.23 a.m ET on Friday.
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