PGA Tour Changes Payouts From FedEx Cup Playoffs Bonus Pool

The Tour Championship, with its new scoring format, will also have a new purse of $40 million with $10 million to the winner; the points leader after the BMW Championship will earn $5 million.
The winner of the Tour Championship will receive $10 million from a $40 million tournament purse.
The winner of the Tour Championship will receive $10 million from a $40 million tournament purse. / John David Mercer-Imagn Images

With a change to the format coming this year at the Tour Championship, the PGA Tour is altering the disbursement of $100 million in bonus money that is paid out to players who make it to the final event of the FedEx Cup playoffs.

Because the tournament will no longer have a starting strokes format and will have all 30 players competing for a single tournament title, the winner will now receive $10 million in bonus money, with $5 million going to second place and $355,000 going to last place. There will be a total purse of $40 million.

The $25 million bonus to the winner is no longer being paid but the money is being spread to the points leaders through the BMW Championship, the second playoff event that determines who goes to Atlanta.

The leader in points will earn $5 million there—in addition to the purse that will be $20 million just as the FedEx St. Jude Championship and the eight signature events. Bonus money at the BMW goes down to $195,000 for the 30th and last qualifier for the Tour Championship.

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Still in place is the Comcast Business Tour Top 10 which pays $40 million in bonus money to the top 10 in the final FedEx Cup standings through the Wyndham Championship, the final regular season tournament.

The leader at that point gets $10 million.

So a player who leads in FedEx Cup points after the Wyndham and following the BMW Championship and also wins the Tour Championship would receive $25 million in bonus money. None of that counts the purses at those events, aside from the Tour Championship, which will be all bonus money.

In late May the Tour announced a change to the Tour Championship, scrapping the “starting strokes” format that has been in place since 2019. Last year, Scheffler was given a two-shot advantage over the field because he had led in points through the BMW. He started at -10 with the rest of the field having various starting points down to even par.

The system was mostly criticized, changed after the 2018 Tour Championship to assure a single winner.

Now the winner of the Tour Championship, a 72-hole event in which everyone starts the same, will decide the FedEx Cup champion.


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Bob Harig
BOB HARIG

Bob Harig is a senior writer covering golf for Sports Illustrated. He has more than 25 years experience on the beat, including 15 at ESPN. Harig is a regular guest on Sirius XM PGA Tour Radio and has written two books, "DRIVE: The Lasting Legacy of Tiger Woods" and "Tiger and Phil: Golf's Most Fascinating Rivalry." He graduated from Indiana University where he earned an Evans Scholarship, named in honor of the great amateur golfer Charles (Chick) Evans Jr. Harig, a former president of the Golf Writers Association of America, lives in Clearwater, Fla.