Which Caddies Have Made More Than $1,000,000 In 2026?

The socio-economic profile of caddies has changed enormously from the beginnings of the game. Caddies were often youngsters or low-skilled and poorly educated. Now, at the top level, caddying is seen as a profession – a respectable career for highly educated college graduates.

The driver for this change is the amount of prize money that has come into the game. Once golf became a popular televised sport, and prize money increased in line with golf’s raised profile, caddying became more profitable.

Tournament caddies are typically paid a fee plus a percentage of their player’s winnings. With prize money now at stratospheric levels, top caddies can become exceedingly rich.

A country’s best-paid sportsman

It was oft claimed that the best-paid sportsman in New Zealand was Steve Williams. He was Tiger Woods’ caddie from 1999 to 2011 and was on the bag for 13 of Woods’ 15 Major wins and 63 of his PGA Tour titles.

Steve Williams amassed an estimated $12 million just from his share of the prize money during his time caddying for Woods.

Williams’ profile also allowed him to secure his own sponsorship deals. After splitting with Woods, Williams caddied for Adam Scott, winning another Major. It is reported that Williams is worth around $20m in net assets.

How cuts and costs are allocated

Every caddie has their own financial agreement with their player, and these are rarely made public. Caddies are considered self-employed contractors, and normally pay their own travel and hotel costs. The player, in return, pays them a fee per tournament, typically somewhere around $1,500 to $4,000.

Where caddies can make big money is through their cut of the player’s tournament prize money. A typical agreement a caddie might have with a top golfer is 10% of the winning prize money, 7% of the prize money for other top-10 finishes, and 5% of the prize money for finishes outside the top 10.

Some journeymen tour players, who do not expect many top 10s, are said to offer a straight commission on all prize money of around 7-8%.

But every player makes his own agreements with his or her caddie. Seve Ballesteros notoriously offered his caddie only a 5% cut of any prize money.

But Woods is said to have paid his caddie 10% of his prize money regardless of finishing position. If rumours are true, Woods also covered his caddie’s travel and hotel costs.

When the money flows in

Get on the bag of a winning golfer, or just one regularly high up the leaderboard, and the money soon rolls in these days.

Scottie Scheffler was the highest-earning golfer on the 2026 PGA Tour in prize money. He is coy about what he pays his caddie, as are most golfers.

But, presuming a 10-7-5 split, Scheffler’s caddie, Ted Scott, would have earned $5,882,585.94 this year as his share of the prize money. In addition, he will receive either a retainer or a tournament fee.

Further down the field, the man 30th in the FedExCup table, JJ Spaun, earned $5,099,908 in tournament prize money during a season that included one win and three other top-10 finishes.

Again presuming a 10-7-5 split, his caddie Mark Carens, who has been on Spaun's bag since April 2021, will have earned $376,721.80 in his cut of this prize money.

On top of this, he would have been paid a fee, and most likely a proportion of Spaun’s FedExCup bonus of $245,000 as an upfront payment and a deferred pension payout of $305,000.

As the FedExCup bonus pool is not for a specific tournament, and part of the bonus is paid into a pension fund, players have separate agreements with their caddies as to how, and if, this bonus money is shared.

LPGA Tour

Prize money in the women’s pro game is substantial but does not remotely match that on the PGA Tour. Nevertheless, caddies can still make a good living on this tour, especially if looping for the top players.

Jeeno Thitikul won the most prize money in women’s golf in 2025, with $8,269,748.75. Her caddie, Banpot Bunpisansaree, has been on her bag since she was 16 years old, and before she turned professional.

Based on the standard 10-7-5 professional golf caddie split, Banpot Bunpisansaree would have earned an estimated $736,541.91 purely from his share of Jeeno Thitikul’s official prize money pool.

How millionaires were born

The term ‘millionaire’ originated in France in 1719 to describe speculators who became extremely wealthy through holding shares in the Mississippi Company, which were originally sold for 500 livres and rocketed to over 10,000 livres in late 1719.

In 1821, the Oxford English Dictionary included the word, which it defined as a “person possessed of a ‘million of money’”.

A millionaire is thus someone with net assets worth at least a million of the local currency. However, sometimes modern usage equates the word to an annual income of a million to reimpose the exclusivity of millionaire status.

According to the UBS Global Wealth Report, roughly 1 in 10 adult Americans qualify as millionaires and 16% to 18% of American households have a net worth of $1 million or more. In the UK, around 1 in 20 adults are dollar millionaires..

As to how many caddies are part of this group, well, the short answer is no-one knows, or can know. Bit estimates vary from 60 top a number in the low three figures.

What is certain is that someone who gets on the bag of someone who visits the upper reaches of the leaderboard on even a semi-frequent basis for a few seasons, will have earned him- or herself a tidy sum.

Million-a-year

Six players’ bags this year would have paid out $1m in prize money, presuming a 10-7-5 split: four on the PGA Tour and two in the LIV Golf League.

On the PGA Tour, it was the bags of Scheffler (Scott), Cam Young (Kyle Sterbinsky), Matt Fitzpatrick (Daniel Parratt) and Wyndham Clark that were the most lucrative. Clark changed his caddie during the season, so no one person earned $1m from his bag.

On the LIV Golf League, Jon Rahm’s (Adam Hayes) and Bryson DeChambeau’s (Greg Bodine) bags would have earned their caddies over $1m.

The modern caddie is viewed as a partner in a well-paid elite performance sport — and the financial rewards now reflect that.