Columnist Dean Juipe: Rich golfers have fingers crossed, too

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2001 | 9:58 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

It's as if the well will never run dry, that the prize money will never do anything but continue to increase.

Year after year passes and the number of millionaires on the PGA Tour escalates proportionately. Already this season, with the tour in town for the Invensys Classic at Las Vegas that opens Wednesday at three local courses, a record 47 players have exceeded $1 million in 2001 earnings.

Last year the total was a then-record 45. It was a then-record 36 the year before that ... and so on.

Yet in the tour's corporate offices in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., there has to be some concern that a softening U.S. and world economy could negatively impact the spiraling incomes of the PGA and its blessed members. Even an event as close to home as the Invensys supposedly has run into problems with peripheral sponsors who have come up a little short in the cash department.

Pro golf, like the U.S. economy itself, has been booming for several years. As recently as 10 years ago the cumulative prize fund for the tour was $49 million, while this year it's up another $28 million from last year and to a staggering $185 million.

Additionally, and for comparison's sake, the tour's total prize fund in 1969 was $5.4 million, and that's now an average -- or maybe even below average -- year for Tiger Woods.

The money trail runs so deep on the PGA Tour these days that a player has to collect roughly $400,000 to even finish in the top 125 for the season and keep his playing card for the following year. It also allows a player such as Kevin Sutherland, who has never won a tour event, to have earned almost $1.5 million this year (largely on the strength of seven top-10 finishes).

Former UNLV player Chris Riley is another guy getting rich in spite of not having won, as he stands 51st on the current money list with $964,902.

And these dollar figures reflect only "official" earnings and do not take into account equipment manufacturers' subsidies and tour-sponsored bonuses, such as the "West Coast Swing" that opens the year and the "Fall Finish" that's ongoing. In both of those bonus plans, one player gets $500,000 (and other players split another $500,000) for scoring well during a specific period of time.

Of course, and conversely, a player is responsible for his own travel expenses and those would be substantial over a year's time.

Tour commissioner Tim Finchem did not make himself available for comment on the tour's fiscal health Monday despite a request, but he's the guardian of an organization that's all but totally reliant on the nation's economy. Pro golf taps into corporate vaults, including TV, for the bulk of its working capital and any downturn in the country's Gross National Product would affect the tours as well.

Unlike the professional athletes who compete in team sports and have the "luxury" of a binding contract, golfers have no such guarantee or assurance. They play for what's on the table today.

Right now, that table is stacked so high with currency bearing the likeness of Ben Franklin that the $100s must seem like play money for those who have mastered the game.

Yet golfers have their fingers crossed, too. It's just that theirs are more bejeweled than ours.