The PGA Tour tried to keep its best players on the more established tour by offering more prize money during the 2022–23 season. This was done to counteract the threat of LIV Golf.
When regular games with $20 million purses were added, it made it easier for players to make money on the PGA Tour. From the start, it looked like someone would beat Scottie Scheffler’s record of $24,796,910, which he set after finishing second at the Tour Championship at the end of the 2021/22 season.
Jon Rahm set the pace early on. He had already accumulated $12,826,540 since winning the Masters in April. But that was the only time the Spaniard won all season, so someone could still catch him.
Viktor Hovland was one of those players. He was quietly going about his business while Rahm won four times in the first few months of the year and lit up the PGA Tour.
At all times, there were signs that the Norwegian was having a great year. For example, he tied for second place at the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass in March, which made him $1.96m, and he won The Memorial Tournament three months later, which paid him $3.6m.
At the same time, Scheffler was having another great season. He won the WM Phoenix Open and the Players Championship, which earned him $8.1m. Texan did, in fact, win the most money on the PGA Tour in 2022–2023. He made $21,014,342, which is almost $7m more than Hovland, who came in third place behind Rahm.
There was one more change, though: bonus money was given out at the Tour Championship, which was the last event in the FedEx Cup Playoffs. Hovland won the prize and an extra $18m at East Lake.
That made Hovland $32,112,235, but there was still more to come. The 26-year-old got an extra $1.4 million for coming in seventh place in the Comcast Business Tour top 10. This is a prize for the top players in the FedEx Cup results at the end of the regular season. That made the grand sum an amazing $33,512,235, which is over $7 million more than Scheffler and $12 million more than Rahm.
Since the season went all the way through, you would have to take Hovland’s earnings from the 2022 part to get the number for just 2023. This will bring the PGA Tour total down to $32,800,805.
Hovland did play a few times on the DP World Tour in 2023, though. He won $381,600 for finishing fifth in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth and another $910,000 for finishing second at the DP World Tour Championship.
That means Hovland has made a total of $33,710,805 in 2023. If you count the events he played in during the 2022 PGA Tour season, that number goes up to $34,803,835 more.
What did Hovland do with all of his huge gains over the past year? That question was asked of him at the season-ending event of the DP World Tour in Dubai. “Not necessarily materialistic things,” he replied. “That’s the cool stuff: I took my mum on a nice trip to Malta, where we hung out, ate good food and saw some sights.”
