PGA Tour: How Tiger Woods Put $105k in Troy Merritt's Pocket

It's no secret I really like watching the competition for tour cards in the fall. In some ways I think that it’s more compelling to see guys struggling to stay in the top 125 or 150, than compete for a top-10 world rankings spot.

This article on golfweek.com got me thinking.  Failure on the PGA Tour is more lucrative than expected.  In fact, in 2009 the top-125 cut-off was $681,631.  Most people would kill to make that kind of money in a single year.  But in 2010, Troy Merritt, who landed at 125 on the money list, made even more money, $786,977, an increase of $105k over last year.

What explains the jump in earnings at the lower end of the PGA tour money list?  The total prize money increased slightly (by about $1.4m) but that’s not enough to skew these numbers.  The big difference, in fact, was the performance of Tiger, Phil, and Steve Stricker.

Tiger was the primary factor in this increase.  In 2009, he won $10.5m.  In 2010, he won $1.3m.  In 2009, Phil won $5.3m.  In 2010, his winnings fell to $3.8m.  And in 2009, Stricker won $6.3m, falling to $4.2 in 2010.  That’s a total of $12.9m in winnings ($9.2 from Tiger alone) that the trio left on the table for everybody else.

Theoretically this drop off in winnings by 2009′s top three players should have created a void for others to step up and dramatically increase their 2010 winnings.  But nobody did. Tiger, Phil, and Stricker all won more in 2009 than the 2010 money leader, Matt Kuchar.

In fact, it’s a really interesting exercise to assume that the money left on the table was distributed evenly among the remaining players in the top 125.  If you take that $12.9m and divide it by 122, you end up with $105k—exactly the increase in winnings for the 125 spot on the money list.

Now obviously Troy Merritt had a great finish to the 2010 season, winning the Kodak Challenge, which had nothing to do with Tiger.  But when he’s putting together his Christmas gift list this year, he shouldn’t forget about Tiger.  After all, nothing says “Thanks for the $100k” like a pajamagram.