2016 Olympic Golf – Career Earnings by Type of Tour

Thoughts:

Your #1 Ranked Earners

As one of the most seasoned, oldest, and most experienced golfers, it’s no surprise that Sergio, the #1 ranked PGA Tour career earner in Rio, makes a ton more money than Kjeldsen and Jaidee.

But how about the miniscule gap between Jaidee, the #1 Asian Tour career earner, and Kjeldsen? Tomorrow I’ll be breaking down average amount made based on years of experience. I still find the $600,000 gap pretty surprising. Maybe it’s because of Kjeldsen’s recent kick-assery on the PGA Tour and in Majors.

Give credence to Jaidee. He’s got an $11 million buffer between himself and the second highest career earner.

Kjeldsen does have a $6 million gap from Joost Luiten, but there are other golfers that are right around that gap from him as well.

There’s Nice Dough to be Made on the European Tour

In Rio, there are 21 PGA Tour golfers and 18 European Tour golfers. The median golfer for each Tour is as follows:

PGA Tour: #11 – Graham DeLaet: $9,363,075

European Tour: #9 – Thorbjorn Olesen: $7,967,074

Maybe it’s because I live in America, but I don’t feel like the European Tour gets the admiration, respect, and coverage that it deserves. Sure, Sky Sports provides plenty of coverage, and the Golf Channel picks up some of its overseas coverage.

That’s why I’m proposing some end-of-year Tournament between the Top 8 golfers from the PGA Tour and European Tour (not during Ryder Cup years). I don’t know what purpose it would serve other than being a great PR opportunity for the European Tour and to show that the game of golf is both global and thriving around the world.

2016 Olympic Golf – Players Ranked by Career Earnings

I’ll be sure to provide further insight on this throughout the weekend (i.e. dollar winnings are not created “equal” between the PGA Tour, European Tour, & Asian Tour), but here’s the breakdown of career earnings in descending order.

Thoughts:

The Process I Used

Just your classic aggregation of data. Usually, I allowed Google and their powerful SEO optimization to provide a conclusion on which tour a golfer predominantly plays on.

Of course, many of these golfers cycle through all three tours – Kjeldsen has made himself well known in America from his outstanding play during majors this year, especially at Augusta.

For whatever reason, the Asian Tour website doesn’t aggregate the career earnings for a player. I did some quick mental math and got a ballpark number for those guys. So apologies to Wen-Tang Lin Fan Club if I estimated his earnings to low and he finished behind SSP Chawrasia.

Joost Luiten!

From a quick glance, this is easily the biggest surprise for me. I follow the game of golf quite extensively, but that’s a name I wasn’t expecting to see so high up on the list.

Even with multiple stars electing to skip the Olympics, Luiten ranks 13th on that list and 2nd among European Tour players. He’s surpassed $10 million in career earnings.

Proficiat!

73% of the Field are Millionaires

While I did say earlier that not all these dollars are “equal” – we all know the PGA Tour is much more competitive than the European or Asian Tour – dollars bills with the faces of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are worth just the same, no matter where they are won.

44 of your 60 Olympic Golfers have surpassed the $1 million mark in career earnings.

 

The Two Question Marks at the Bottom

My searching did not lead me to much information regarding either golfer, except that Ashun had a great week on the Asian Tour lately and moved up about 250 spots in the Official World Golf Rankings.

I’ll probably just tweet at the top 10-15 golf analysts out there who are in Rio and can ask Wu and Mr. Green.