Men’s Professional Golf Has Become a Laughingstock

The 2024 Tour Championship, a hard-to-watch, slurping up of money that capped off the 2024 PGA season proves my point.

The Handicap

A golfer’s ‘handicap’ is the sport’s method of allowing players of varied ability to ‘give each other a game.’ It’s essentially a fairness test and takes into account your average scoring across a lifetime. Mine was 18, a very mediocre handicap that presumed I would be able to play a 72 registered course at about 100. If I played a game with a 12-handicap golfer, he’d give me six strokes. It’s complicated, but you get my drift.

Not so in the season-ending 2024 Tour Championship

For reasons that has never been successfully explained, other than greed, players there tee off with a minus-score depending upon how well they did on tour during the year. The top 30 players compete. Scottie Scheffler began the tournament with a ten-under score, before he’d even hit a ball.

That would be like me playing a 12-handicap player and giving him six strokes. Scheffler played well though, shooting six-under for the first day and posting a score of sixteen under. No one came close to him, as he won the tournament and banked $25 million for his trouble.

Twenty-five million dollars for winning a single tournament? And then giving the top golfer in the world a ten-stroke head start?

What a worthless example of the money-greed that has come to dominate a once-great sport

The top thirty pro golfers that made up the field divvied up a hundred million bucks. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos could have privately sponsored the whole shebang for an afternoon’s earnings, but that’s an entirely different story.

Take a look at the full (and looney) handicap system:

Seeding     Starting strokes

1               10 under
2               8 under
3               7 under
4               6 under
5               5 under
6-10          4 under
11-15         3 under
16-20         2 under
21-25         1 under
26-30         Par

The last four guys played an honest 72 holes. All others were piranhas in a feeding-frenzy, co-conspirators in the ruination of what was once called a ‘gentleman’s game.’

Who do you suppose won?

Scottie, of course, at an aggregate thirty under, but the top ten included (along with a gobsmacking payout)

Scottie Scheffler           -30    $25,000,000
Collin Morikawa           -26    $12,500,000
Sahith Theegala          -24    $7,500,000
Russell Henley            -19    $4,833,333
Adam Scott                  -19    $4,833,333
Xander Schauffele       -19    $4,833,333
Sungjae Im                   -18    $2,750,000
Wyndham Clark           -17    $2,250,000
Rory McIlroy                -16    $1,608,333
Hideki Matsuyama       -16    $1,608,333

And, if you wonder why pro golfers engage in this charade

Even the last five guys, out of the thirty, banked over a half-million bucks, which is not a poor four-day paycheck. But what would have been the results if the game had been played honestly, with no faked scores?

I’m so glad you asked. Take a look:

1: Collin Morikawa — 66-63-67-66 (-22)
2: Sahith Theegala — 67-66-66-64 (-21)
3: Scottie Scheffler — 65-66-66-67 (-20)
4: Russell Henley — 67-71-67-62 (-17)
5: Adam Scott — 66-67-68-67 (-16)

Scotty Scheffler would have come third, because he’s a helluva golfer, but Colin Morikawa actually won the tournament.

Does it matter?

Does the sport itself even matter anymore? In times of women’s empowerment, how is it that the LPGA pays $2-300,000 for a major win and the men go to the bank with ten times that? Nellie Korda won five tournaments in a row this year, and banked a fraction of the men.

I remember Sam Snead saying that, in his day, the purse was usually a couple hundred bucks and, more often than not, the check bounced. Sam remains one ahead of Tiger at 82 wins. Lifetime earnings are another matter, Tiger with $121 million and Sam, $621,000 over a 42-year career, a little less than Tony Finau took home for winning 23^rd at the Player’s.

Rory McIlroy is this year’s bad-boy, throwing his 3-wood in the lake after a poor shot

He keeps coming close, but ‘close’ doesn’t satisfy his ego, with total career earnings of $147 million as of June 2024, including $87.8 million in official earnings, $1.89 million in unofficial earnings, $38.5 million from Tour Championships, $15.5 million from PIP (whatever the hell that is) and $4.1 million from the Tour Top-10.

Celebrity has its privileges, but the public is getting weary of both the greed and the complainers.