Okay, so I was watching the Chevron Championship highlights last night, right? And the announcer kept yapping about this massive prize purse. Got me curious – how does the cash actually trickle down? Decided to dig into it myself.
The Starting Point
First thing I did? Hit up the official LPGA website. Figured they’d have the payout details. Big mistake. Scrolled through endless tabs about players and schedules – nothing. Then I tried the Chevron Championship’s own site. More fluff about sponsors and hospitality tents. Zero concrete numbers. Felt like hunting for a needle in a haystack.
Switched tactics. Typed “Chevron Championship 2024 prize money breakdown” straight into Google. That’s when stuff popped up – golf news sites had scoops from press releases. Finally found some numbers! Total purse hit $5.2 million this year. Up from last year’s $5.1M. Okay, progress.
Crunching the Numbers
Copied the payout table from a site into my spreadsheet. Needed to visualize it. Started at the top: winner Nelly Korda bagged $775,000. Crazy, right? That’s almost 15% of the whole purse. Runner-up got $468k – big drop already!
Got deeper into the math:
- Top 10 averaged around $180k-$50k
- Cut line (around 50th place) dropped to $15k-ish
- Last place finisher? Still took home $6,500 for four days’ work
Noticed a pattern: the real cash cliff happens after 20th place. Below that, payouts shrink super slow. One finisher separated by a stroke might only get $200 more than the next. Anti-climactic!
Realizations and Head-Scratchers
While plotting the data, two things slapped me in the face:
First, players outside the top 25 basically break even after expenses – coach fees, flights, caddie cuts. Made me realize why so many grind on minor tours.
Second, Chevron’s purse boost felt… performative? Like, yeah it’s up $100k overall, but most players saw peanuts. The real winners were the superstars. That top-heavy structure ain’t changing soon.
Wrapping It Up
Took screenshots of my spreadsheet, made a simple bar chart showing how steep the payout drop is after position #5. Sent it to my golf buddy with the caption: “See why everyone goes insane over weekend leaderboards now?”
Spent way too long on this – thought it’d be a 10-minute Google search. But hey, now I get why players sweat over every putt when they’re on the bubble. That $10k difference? Pays rent.
