Golf Remains Divided As PGA Tour’s $100 Million Playoffs Get Underway

Men’s professional golf remains a fractured sport for now, but the world’s top players continue to compete for more money than ever before.

As LIV Golf members play for a $25 million purse in the league’s West Virginia event this weekend, the PGA Tour’s FedExCup Playoffs are teeing off in Memphis on Thursday, with two $20 million tournament prize pots and a record $100 million in bonus money up for grabs over the next three weeks. 

The 70 PGA Tour players who qualified for the postseason will be whittled down to 50 for next week’s tournament in Colorado, and eventually 30 for the season-ending Tour Championship in Atlanta. 

• The winner of that final event will take home $25 million as this year’s FedExCup champion, up from the $18 million that Viktor Hovland won last year. 
• Second place will receive $12.5 million. 
• The top 10 finishers in the FedExCup collectively will take home $68.25 million.

Mark Your Calendars

The PGA Tour released its 2025 season schedule Wednesday, which likely means negotiations with LIV’s financial backers, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, are not far enough along to expect a reunion of top players on a singular circuit next year. “I think that’s fair,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said when asked about that proposition ahead of the FedEx St. Jude Championship.

Monahan stuck to his previous stance of not sharing specific details of talks with the PIF, but he acknowledged he has taken part in a lot of meetings on the subject. “We continue to be in regular dialogue,” he said. “I’m encouraged by that.”

LIV will finish its season next month, but it has not released a schedule for 2025. Last year, LIV formally announced its 2024 calendar in November, about a month after its 2023 season finished in October.