The prize money in professional golf has risen astronomically in recent years.
The first US Open was held in 1895. It was won by Englishman Horace Rawlins and he received $150. That is the equivalent of $5,600 at today’s prices. When Ben Hogan won his fourth and final US Open, in 1953, it won him £5,000, the equivalent of $59,100 today. When Tom Watson won his only US Open, at Pebble Beach in 1982, it brought him $60,000 ($196,000 in today’s prices).
When Tiger Woods won his second US Open win on 2002 it was the first time that US Open winner got a seven figure cheque – the winning cheque was for exactly $1m, which was $200,000 more than Tiger had won two years previously for winning this Major.
This year’s winner won $4.3m.
In 1991 Corey Pavin had been the leading money winner on the PGA Tour. He won $979,430. In 1997 Tiger Woods headed this list for the first time. He earned $2,066,833 in prize money that season. The last time he headed the PGA Tour seasonal money list was in 2013, when he won $8,553,439.
Last year the winner of the PGA Tour money list earned $29,228,357 – and that figure excludes the $25m he got for winning the Tour Championship.
So our advice when picking answers for this quiz is the same as we gave for the DP World Career Tour Earnings quiz – go for the more recent players. (You have to have earned more than $62.5m to be on it.) Poor old Horace Rawlins and his ilk do not feature on it. Incidentally, were he to have been paid the same equivalent figure as this year’s US Open winner he would have to have been paid $114,500, not $150.
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