Plenty of players have significantly boosted their bank balances this year. Among the LIV Golf high earners was Brooks Koepka, whose two wins on the circuit and Major success in the PGA Championship contributed to his haul of over $22 million, while Cameron Smith wasn’t too far behind, coming up just short of $20m.
Meanwhile, there were similar figures for some PGA Tour players helped by its designated events with their increased payouts. Scottie Scheffler backed up a spectacular breakout year in 2022 to claim $26m, while Masters champion Jon Rahm earned over $21m.
However, only one player on each circuit breached the $30m barrier - LIV Golf’s Talor Gooch and PGA Tour star Viktor Hovland.
Of the two, the most surprising success was Gooch. After all, before joining the big-money circuit, his most noteworthy performance was victory in the 2021 RSM Classic on the PGA Tour. Nevertheless, three wins in less than three months, in Adelaide, Singapore and Andalucia, set him well on his way to finishing top of the individual standings – and finishing the year as top earner thanks to prize money of $4m in each.
Gooch was crowned individual champion after LIV Golf Jeddah, an achievement that banked him another $18m. He then finished the season with a further $800,000 courtesy of his efforts to help his Range Goats GC team to runner-up at the Team Championship, giving him $36,120,012 across the 14 tournaments to make him the highest earning player on LIV Golf of 2023.
Gooch also played a handful of events elsewhere on the Asian Tour, and made the cut at The Masters. Overall, that gave him a further $173,416 to leave him on an enormous $36,293,428 for the calendar year.
Over on the PGA Tour, Norwegian Hovland was having a stellar season of his own, including T3 at The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass, which he followed up with victory in the Memorial Tournament and another in the BMW Championship.
He took the momentum from that win to the Tour Championship at East Lake for his third victory of the year to claim the FedEx Cup title and with it an $18m bonus, leaving him with PGA Tour earnings of $32,800,805 for the calendar year.
Not done there, following the Ryder Cup, where Hovland helped Team Europe to victory, he played twice on the DP World Tour, finishing fifth in the BMW PGA Championship and T2 at the DP World Tour Championship to bank another $1,291,600, to take his 2023 earnings to $33,710,805 with the Hero World Challenge to come.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, it was Gooch, plying his trade on a circuit with vast riches, who emerged the highest earner of the two, but the fact Hovland ran him so close is an indicator of just how far the PGA Tour pushed to remain competitive in the midst of the LIV Golf threat.
