No Cut At Bear Mountain Means Money In The Bank
With three rounds comes no cut and a guaranteed pay cheque for teeing it up...
For players on the PGA TOUR Champions, there are a few things that are different.
First almost everyone you are competing with has won at least once on the regular tour before coming to the 50+ circuit.
Second is that there are only three rounds and more importantly no cut which means that fans are guaranteed to see their favourite players through the weekend.
With no cut, also every player is guaranteed a pay cheque.
While still big, the cheques are not as lucrative as those on the "flat belly" tour.
81 players sharing a piece of the pie versus around 70 on The PGA Tour added to total purses of around only $2.5 million USD compared to more than $6 million for the PGA TOUR means that there is less for everyone.
At the top, the winner at the 2016 Pacific Links Bear Moutnain Championship (Colin Montgomerie) gets $375,000 (15% of the purse).
Come 25th and you are down to 1% of the pie and will pcoket $25,000.
By the time the top 50 have been paid, the pickings are getting a little lean. At that point players are taking in less than $10,000.
When you take into account paying the caddie, travel, etc., after-expenses pay can be in the $3000-$4000 range for a week's work.
Still looking at the money leaders for PGA TOUR Champions, those pay cheques can add up to some big numbers over a year.
Bernard Langer leads the way in 2016 with more than $2.4 million in winnings year-to-date, more than $1 million dollars clear of his cloest competitor, Joe Durant.
At the #50 spot is Mark Brooks who has won more than $250,000 in 19 events.
For comparison, on the PGA Tour that 50th position would mean current 2016 winnings of around $2 million while on the Web.com Tour, it would be around $100,000.
So it does not seem to matter which tour you look at, there are still a fair numbers of zeros.