The Staggering Financial Gap Between Nelly Korda And The Rest Of The LPGA Field

To keep your full status on the LPGA Tour, you need to finish inside the top 80 on the Race to the CME Globe points list – players 81-100 keep their cards but have a lower priority – so that seems a good place to start when looking at prize money.

In 2025 Ashleigh Buhai finished in 80^th spot having made 14/22 cuts and had two top 10s, all of which added up to $291k.

At the other end Jeeno Thitikul made 20 starts, picked up money in 19 of them and finished inside the top 10 14 times. There were three wins, including the defence of her Tour Championship title which gave her the vast pay-out of $4m.

Her total for the 2025 season was $7.6m which was more than twice as much as Miyu Yamashita in second.

This year Nelly Korda is already on $6.2m with eight more possible starts, capped by the riches of the season-ender in Florida. To state the obvious if you are able to pick your weeks to dazzle, then the five Majors and Tour Championship are the ones to do it.

Lottie Woad, for example, won the Kroger Queen City Championship in May and she picked up $300k from total prize pot of £2m. Now, when you compare that to the Majors, that is relatively small fry.

Leading Tournaments For Prize Money 2026 (In Order)

• $13m KPMG Women’s PGA Championship
• $12.5m US Women’s Open
• $11m CME Group Tour Championship
• $10m AIG Women’s Open
• $9.1m Amundi Evian Championship
• $9m Chevron Championship

No other tournament has a pot over $5m. You might think, with the Women’s Scottish Open being a co-sanctioned event with the LET, that the prize money would bring a huge purse but, again, the winner here receives $300k.

The last few years have seen a seismic shift in prize money in the women’s game as more parity seeps into the sport. In 2022 the Women’s PGA Championship doubled from $4.5m to $9m in a single year, a figure that has now since very nearly tripled.

And as such the powers-that-be are able to make statements about being the biggest and the best, even if that isn’t true and is only based on the prize purse.

“We're proud to deliver the premier major on the LPGA Tour," said Tim Walsh, the US chair and CEO for KPMG. "Working with the PGA of America and the LPGA Tour, we're combining a record purse with technology that gives players better, real-time insight into their performance, along with broader, more dynamic coverage for fans. It's all about continuing to build momentum for women's golf."

Tennis’ Grand Slams are well known for having the same prize money, which isn’t the case in golf, but all five now offer a very respectable offering and a world away from many of the LET events which only pay out a total purse of €350k – the winner here receives €52.5k.

One stat from this season, which would have been unthinkable in years gone by is that Korda earnt more from her five Major starts than Scottie Scheffler did in the men’s quartet of big ones.

Korda won the opening two Majors, the Chevron and the US Women’s Open, as well as top 10s at the Women’s PGA Championship and AIG Women’s Open. In total she won $4.59m which was only bettered by Rory McIlroy and Wyndham Clark in the men’s game.

Haeran Ryu also won a pair of big ones, the Women’s PGA Championship and Evian, to pick up $3.7m which was slightly ahead of the Open champion Ryan Fox.

Korda is the clear World No. 1 and the poster girl of women’s golf. In 2025 Sportico listed the top 15 highest-paid female athletes and Korda and Thitikul were both in there. Thitikul won $7.6m, there was $2.5m in endorsements which gave her $10.1m and 15^th place.

Korda had a winless year, lost her No. 1 spot but still pulled in $13.8m, $11m of which came in sponsorship. At the time the American had 14 marketing partners (FOURTEEN!) which included Nike, TaylorMade, Goldman Sachs, T-Mobile, Franklin Templeton EY, Delta Airlines, Emirates Airlines, BMW, Cisco, TUMI, Whoop and Upper Deck.

This is a whole world away from the vast majority of the women’s tour pros.

This season Korda won the year’s first two Majors, is well clear of Thitikiul on the rankings and is already over $6m in on-course earnings so we can expect the off-course bits to spiral even further.

Korda won’t be part of the upcoming WGTL, probably for a variety of reasons and she certainly doesn’t need the money or time commitment but she is also making a stand due to not making it a mixed event in the first place.

“I think it's a huge and unbelievable miss that we're not playing alongside the men. It would have been the first time, I think, that men and women are on the same playing field, playing for the same exact amount of money.”

If we were to look at the players in the middle of the 2025 money list then we have Woad in 40^th. The English star, who only played nine times after turning pro midway through the season, won $830k last year.

There was a brilliant article in Golf Digest a couple of years ago where an unnamed tour pro broke down a 20^th-place finish and $100k pay day as follows:

• Flight: $800
• Accommodation: $3.2k
• Caddie: $10k (8% plus weekly rate)
• Coach and trainer: $2k
• Food: $200
• Federal: $37k
• Tournament state: $7k

So, he took home $39.8k from a $100k finish.

This year, as things stand, we have a whole host of Solheim players in the 70-80 slots on the money list: Anna Nordqvist (70), Carlota Ciganda (72), Lindy Duncan (73), Nastasia Nadaud (75), Julia Lopez Ramirez (76), Andrea Lee (77) and Linn Grant (81).

A good example of how your career (and earnings) can fluctuate is Gabi Ruffels. The Aussie, who won the US Amateur in 2019, comfortably kept her card in 2024 and 2025 but this year has been a different story. The 26-year-old has made 14 starts and only played on the weekend three times, which adds up to just $55k and a long way from keeping her playing privileges in 2026.