Tiger Crosses The $100 Million Mark In On-Course Earnings

The dollar figure may not impress considering his former off-course earnings haul and maybe doesn't mean much considering how many limited-field events he cashed in on.

The magnitude of the achievement is summed up not necessarily by something in AP's story by Jimmy Golen, which has some interesting quotes from Tiger, but by this from a Golf Digest Tweet:

Comments

[UnderTheChin]

Alot of money for Elin

[cameron]

i think most people are incapable of even putting this into perspective. it's a lot of money, yes, but the win total is much more impressive to me. couldn't care less how much money he's making, i just like watching him win.

[A3]

I heard Tiger took out a mortgage on his house to pay Elin.

[Brian S]

For a little perspective, 100 mill doesn't make the top 20 of major league baseball earnings. Jason Giambi, probably not a hall of famer, is at 20, with over 130 million.

[Geoff]

Brian S,
How is a baseball comparison in the cards? Maybe a Roger Federer comparison...

[No Longer Used to be Former S&T Convert]

Glad that they put the Snead comparison in the article - - - 82 wins $620,000. Elk was tweets a few comparisons --- Jeff Overton 0 wins $9.7 million. Jack, 72 wins, 14 majors $5 million, Ricky Fowler 1 win $6 million.

[Blackballed Vijay]

So is the PGA Tour website career earnings list inaccurate? It lists Vijay in second place at 66,791,396. Still a few thousand ahead of Phil. It must have been updated, since Tiger is already beyond 100 mil. Golf Digest must have slipped a few bucks into Phil's pocket.

Does anyone know if Jack's earnings were ever 150% of the guy in second place? That would give a fairly realistic comparison.

[bs]

Federer is quite a good comparison of a contemporaneously dominant player in an individual sport.

He has picked up 76 tour wins including 17 slams, and $73,453,677 in earnings so far. He is 4 or so years younger than Woods. There are significant differences. Tennis careers tend to be shorter and in tennis the marginally better player can force home his advantage by directly affecting his opponent's play, whereas in golf you can't even do that in matchplay. On the other hand, strokeplay golf offers the chance to pick up relatively stress-free $$$$ without the pressure of needing to be good enough to beat an opponent to progress to the next round each time you play - it's possible to move up the money list with a good round when the pressure of winning is off.

The respective figures bear out what I'd expect - a really dominant tennis player is likely to collect more wins in his shorter career because of his ability to make marginal differences count directly, but a top golfer has a better chance of picking up money without needing to win, not least due to the limited field no-cut events.

[Hawkeye]

@Blackballed Vijay: I seem to recall that Watson was at $3 million when Jack cracked the $4 million barrier.

[DTF]

I think the "limited field/no cut" theory is void, at least as far as Tiger is concerned. Sure, there might have been a couple more cuts added to his total list had a cut in fact been in place, but Tiger was waaaay more likely to win them than finish with a score that would have risked a cut (his next to DFL finish at 2010 Firestone obviously an exception, but he only collected $36k for that one), . World Golf Championships are probably the best example of no cut events....best I can tell there have been 51 of these contested (doesn't count World Cup/team events). Tiger has won 16 of them. Geoff Ogilvy is next on list with 3 wins. Darren, Phil, Ernie and Hunter each have 2.

I heard an interesting stat on the radio the other day, when Kevin Garnett completes his current contract his total official on-court earnings/salary will be $328,562,398! That does make Tiger's $100 million seem kind of paltry. Both guys turned pro within a year or two of each other. Both play about the same number of games/days every year. What am I missing?

[BrianS]

I will freely admit ignorance of the economics of Tennis - I watch Wimbledon, US Open, and that's about it. But I don't believe that they are on network TV very much for their "regular" events. On the other hand, the PGA Tour is on network TV probably 40 weeks a year, at least twice, plus cable. Seems to me the overall revenues of the sport should be higher than tennis, but again, I don't know tennis. From a quick glance at the earnings of top tennis guys, it seems there are about 30 men (and women-they are equal which is kind of internesting - think if golf did that!) that make more than 500k a year, then after that it drops into the $200 range or so pretty quickly. Current PGA Tour money has 128 guys over $500k, and the season isn't over. But my comparison to baseball was really to try and point out that while these guys make very good money, in the world of pro sports it really isn't that special. Add to the fact that 1/2 of the guys on most weeks get paid nothing for playing 10 hours of golf, 2 days of practice, and have to pay their own travel expenses, I think they are pretty undercompensated vis a vis other sports.

[digsouth]

I feel better now....I thought Kevin Garnett was tennis player I'd never head 0f....I don't watch any bsketball, or wrestling for that matter.

As for the money, Tennis players DO make money when they do not win, same as golfers, and they DO have travel expenses, etc as ''independent cotractors''. I see several of the PGAT winners who seem to be falling by the wayside, one and dones, one hit wonders, etc...just as Elk said. We'll see who wants trophies, or if just money will do- and that is fine, except fans really need to see who to hitch onto.