Furthermore, there are 18 golfers who have won at least $40 million in on-course earnings, 38 golfers with $30 million or more, 77 who have earned at least $20 million and 189 who have surpassed the $10 million plateau.
In all, 643 golfers have won $5,728,260,700 in career earnings, according to the PGA Tour, through the 2019 WGC-HSBC Champions.
Tiger Woods leads the way, of course. He has topped the $120 million mark and is the only golfer with more than $100 million in career earnings.
The $30 million dollar club
Let’s take a closer look here at the top 38 of all-time.
These are the golfers who have surpassed $30 million in on-course earnings.
Taking our best guess based on history and early commitments as to where and when Tiger Woods will play between now and The Masters.
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Tiger Woods matched Sam Snead with his 82nd victory at the PGA Tour’s Zozo Championship in late October. It left his fans yearning for more and wondering when he will play next.
Woods elected not to play in the upcoming RSM Classic at the Sea Island Golf Club in Georgia, which means his next start in an official Tour event won’t happen until the Sentry Tournament of Champions at the earliest.
But Woods has already confirmed that he will play at the Hero World Challenge, an 18-man, no-cut event that benefits the Tiger Woods Foundation, which begins Dec. 4 at The Albany Club in the Bahamas. Then it is straight to Melbourne, Australia, for The Presidents Cup. Woods will become the first playing captain in the biennial event since Hale Irwin in 1994. Woods is required to play at least one match before the Sunday singles.
As Captain, I’m going to choose Tiger Woods as the last player on the team. https://t.co/AR7zgDTJkZ
That still remains a mystery. As previously noted, he’s eligible for the winners-only Tournament of Champions in Maui, but he skipped it last year even after gaining eligibility as winner of the Tour Championship and hasn’t appeared at Kapalua since 2005 despite a memorable victory there in 2000.
More likely, Woods will make his 2020 debut at his usual starting spot, the Farmers Insurance Open (Jan. 23-26) in San Diego, where he’s won eight times at Torrey Pines, including the 2008 U.S. Open. Woods has yet to commit there, but he’s already done so for the Genesis Invitational, Feb. 13-16. He’s still never won at Riviera Country Club.
Given his myriad injuries, Woods will likely continue with a less is more schedule. So, it will be surprising to see him sign up to the Waste Management Phoenix Open, where he once made the whole state of Arizona shake with a hole-in-one at TPC Scottsdale’s 16th, but also couldn’t break 80 with the chipping yips during his last appearance in 2015. Nor is he likely to be in the mood for the six-hour rounds, potentially cold weather and bumpy greens of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
After his hosting duties at the Genesis Invitational, Woods has been a loyal attendee of WGC’s and could test his stamina by teeing it up two weeks in a row with a start at the WGC-Mexico Championship in Mexico City. If his body cooperates, the Honda Classic, despite being a home game for Woods and the start of the Florida Swing, will be a scheduling casualty as it is doubtful he will choose to play three in a row. That’s too much golf for his back and knee at this stage in his career.
Woods missed the Arnold Palmer Invitational last year. That has been a favorite hunting ground for him and site of eight of his victories. It’s a safe bet that if the body is willing this time, he’ll be there, and the week after is The Players Championship, where Woods is a two-time champion.
In 2018, Woods finished second at the Valspar Championship at Innisbrook. The course fits his eye, but don’t count on Woods showing up unless he’s had to alter his schedule for health reasons or feels the sudden urge to add a start in his run up to the Masters if he’s missed a bunch of cuts and looking for reps.
Last year, Woods made his final tuneup for Augusta at the WGC Dell Technologies Match Play in Austin, Texas. There’s the potential to have to play a lot of golf should Woods go far in the competition, including 36 on Saturday, so his participation here could be subject to change.
All of this leads up to April 9, and Tiger’s defense of the green jacket. That can’t come soon enough, but there should be a respectable number of early-season starts to see Woods and his chase for Tour title No. 83.
The 18-player field for next month’s Hero World Challenge consists of eight players in the top 10 of the Official World Golf Ranking.
“See you boys in the Bahamas.”
That’s what Tiger Woods had to say Wednesday morning on Twitter to Jordan Spieth and Henrik Stenson, his final two additions to the 18-player field for the Hero World Challenge in Albany, Bahamas, Dec. 4-7.
Spieth will finish his year at the Hero after not being selected by Woods with one of his four captain’s picks for the 2019 Presidents Cup, held the following week at Australia’s Royal Melbourne. The Hero will be a Wednesday-Saturday event in order to accommodate players’ travel for the Presidents Cup.
The now-complete field for the Hero features eight of the top-10 players in the Official World Golf Ranking. Here’s the full list of who’s confirmed (OWGR in parentheses).
Tiger Woods (7), USA – Tournament host, five-time champion
Justin Rose (8), England
Xander Schauffele (9), USA
Bryson DeChambeau (10), USA
Webb Simpson (11), USA
Gary Woodland (14), USA
Patrick Reed (15), USA
Tony Finau (16), USA
Rickie Fowler (21), USA – 2017 champion
Matt Kuchar (22), USA
Kevin Kisner (35), USA
Bubba Watson (38), USA – 2015 champion
Henrik Stenson (40), Sweden
Jordan Spieth (43), USA – 2014 champion
The tournament will benefit not only Woods’ TGR Foundation, but also the ONE Bahamas Fund, which was founded by Woods, NEXUS Luxury Collection and members of the Albany community following Hurricane Dorian. The group pledged $6 million towards the rebuilding of the Bahamas with a dollar-for-dollar match in hopes of raising $12 million to help those affected by the hurricane. Justin Timberlake helped begin the efforts in September.
The event will be broadcast on Golf Channel during all four rounds and will air on NBC during Saturday’s final round.
Tiger Woods’s selection of Patrick Reed was the right call and could be the start of the Captain America redemption tour Down Under.
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Of Tiger Woods’s four captain picks for the Presidents Cup, he made three no brainers and chose Patrick Reed.
Woods could have justified the selection of the hot hand, Kevin Na, who has won twice in his past 10 starts, including at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in October. He could’ve picked Rickie Fowler and few would have batted an eye. He could have ignored the standings and current form and gone for veteran leadership and taken Phil Mickelson or went with his gut and Jordan Spieth. (After his 2015 season, could anyone imagine a scenario where a healthy Spieth wouldn’t be on an American team for at least the next decade?)
But Woods made the right call in taking the 29-year-old Reed to round out his team going to Australia this December, despite the fact that, as the saying goes, his baggage doesn’t fit in the overhead compartment.
“Definitely was fired up to get the phone call from Tiger saying that I was a pick and that he can’t wait for me to be a part of the team and that I’d bring a lot to the team,” Reed said in a conference call with media on Tuesday night. “That means a lot, especially coming from one of the greatest golfers ever to live on this planet. For him to trust in me and the team to trust in me means a lot because it means that I’ve worked hard and that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, and that’s try to go out and play the best golf I can.”
Woods could have served as judge and jury and sentenced Reed to a one-year banishment from Team USA for “conduct unbecoming,” to borrow the PGA Tour’s all-encompassing pet phrase. What’s said in the locker room, stays in the locker room. Reed violated this basic rule when he threw Jim Furyk, the 2018 U.S. Ryder Cup captain, under the bus and aired the team’s dirty laundry publicly following the team’s defeat at Le Golf National in France. Forget the staged bro-hug when Reed and Spieth were paired together for the first time this season at the Farmers Insurance Open – the Presidents Cup selection was the ultimate determinant of how severe the consequences of Reed’s actions would be (apparently, at worst, he was given double-secret probation).
No one has a longer memory than Woods – see Stephen Ames, 9 and 8 – but his selection of Reed proves that he’s willing to let bygones be bygones for the good of the future of Team USA.
“That was all put to bed,” Reed said. “We all talked about it. We’ve all moved on, and we’re all just really getting excited for this year and to focus on going out and doing what we’re supposed to do.”
Patrick Reed established his reputation as “Captain America” with his take down of Rory McIlroy at the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine National. Rob Schumacher-USA TODAY Sports
If the U.S. is going to regain the Ryder Cup in 2020, it is going to need the fiery Reed, who Tiger said “bleeds red, white and blue.” Where better for Reed to reestablish his aura as a big-game killer (see, Rory McIlroy, Hazeltine, 2016) than at the Ryder Cup Lite? While Sergio Garcia and Matt Kuchar go around kissing babies in Instagram posts and hosting junior clinics to restore their public image, Reed seems if not to revel in his bad-boy image to at least accept “it is what it is” and the 2019 Presidents Cup has a chance to be his personal Captain America redemption tour Down Under.
“For some reason I love to go in and basically feel like my back is up against the wall and go out and try to prove something every week I play,” he said. “It’s just been something that’s always been a part of me.”
Woods has always been a bit of a lone wolf, too, and he’s said before that he sees some of himself in Reed, the 2018 Masters champion who draped the green jacket on his back this April. While trying to describe what will make Woods a good captain at the Presidents Cup, Reed pointed out that Tiger has taken the time to understand the personalities of each player “and knowing what makes them tick.”
Woods knows that Reed is going to be a fixture on the U.S. side for many years to come and he needs to be brought back into the inner circle, for better or worse. Reed is a match-play maven. He is the U.S. version of Ian Poulter. Or maybe an even better comparison is to say he is the U.S. team’s Colonel Nathan Jessup in “A Few Good Men:”
“My existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, wins matches. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall.”
Yes, we do, and so does Tiger. Do we not want a guy on the team that when asked who he’d like to play in the Sunday singles answers, “Whoever is playing best on their team. I’ve always just loved to go up against the best guy, so whoever is playing the best I’d love to take him on on Sunday.”
Captain America is out to remove the tarnish of going 1-3 in the last Ryder Cup (though he’s a little too quick to point out that he’s still undefeated in singles. Note to Patrick: the team lost; that’s all that matters.) Does Reed feel any extra pressure to live up to his reputation?
“I don’t. You know, everyone has bad years no matter what,” Reed said.
His back is firmly against the wall just the way Reed likes it. America won’t stand for another bad year. Let the redemption tour begin.
In an Australian radio interview promoting the Presidents Cup, Tiger Woods was asked about his plans post retirement.
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Tiger’s feeling loose ahead of the Presidents Cup.
In an interview Tuesday with Triple M’s “Hot Breakfast,” an Australian radio show, Tiger Woods was asked what he plans to do after he retires and if he had any tips for struggling golfers.
In regard to his plans after retirement, Woods said he plans to spend as much time outside as possible.
“For me, it’ll be simple,” Woods said. “I love spearfishing. I love being in the water, I love hunting. I like going on hunting trips, fishing trips and diving trip so to me, just being out in nature is the (expletive) ultimate best.”
The f-bomb drew a surprised, wide-eyed reaction from both talk show hosts, Wil Anderson and Luke Darcy.
“I don’t like being around a lot of people in that regard,” Woods continued. “I like to be out in nature because that’s what I grew up, that’s what I do, golf is always out in nature so for me, that’s the ultimate best.”
As for when retirement might be, Woods didn’t say when, but the 43-year-old did say there’s one advantage to playing into his 50s.
“I think the golden carrot of getting out there when I’m 50 is getting a cart, right?” Woods said, which was met by laughter from Anderson and Darcy.
Woods, who recorded his 82nd PGA Tour victory at the Zozo Championship in October, was also asked in the interview if he had any advice for new or struggling golfers. The 15-time major winner encouraged golfers to start small.
“To get better, I would say more than anything try to make little swings and build up, make bigger swings but hit the ball in the middle of the face,” Woods said. “That’s something I stress with every single junior golfer and every amateur, start with a little pitch shot 10 yards, and then 20, 30. Work your way out and try to hit the ball in the middle of the face.
“If you can find the middle of the face consistently, your game is going to improve by so many shots, you’re going to enjoy the game so much more, but if you can’t find the middle of the face it’s going to be quite frustrating, and this game is frustrating enough.”
The entire interview with Woods including his thoughts on the Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne can be heard below.
