By Estea Rademeyer, Sports Journalist.
Photo Credit: The Open.
Golf’s oldest championship has never paid this well. When the Champion Golfer of the Year lifts the Claret Jug at Royal Birkdale this week, they’ll do so having played for the largest purse in the tournament’s 166-year history, and for a prize fund that says as much about the modern business of major championship golf as it does about the game played on the links.
The R&A has set this year’s total prize fund at $17.75 million (roughly R293 million), up from $17 million at Royal Portrush twelve months ago. The winner’s share climbs to $3.2 million, or close to R52.8 million — a $100,000 bump on last year’s top prize.
It’s worth mentioning how quickly that number has moved. The Open’s purse sat at $6.5 million as recently as 2016. A year later it had jumped to $10.25 million. By 2021 at Royal St George’s it was $11.5 million, then $14 million, then $16.5 million when Brian Harman won at Royal Liverpool in 2023. This year’s increase continues a run of near-annual growth that would have been unthinkable to Bob Charles, who collected £8,500 for winning in 1963, itself a giant leap from the £10 on offer when the Championship began in 1863.
Context matters here, though. Even at $17.75 million, The Open remains the smallest purse of the four men’s majors in 2026. The Masters and U.S. Open each distributed $22.5 million this year; the PGA Championship, $20.5 million. The R&A has narrowed that gap considerably over the past decade, but it hasn’t closed it.
However, the headline number and the amount that lands in the winner’s account are two very different figures, and it’s a gap worth understanding before assuming golf’s paydays are as simple as they look.
Two deductions apply to every champion, regardless of nationality. The first is tradition rather than obligation: it’s standard practice for a winning player to share roughly 10% of the prize money with their caddie, which would put around $320,000 (about R5.3 million) into the bag carrier’s pocket.
The second is unavoidable. Because the R&A is based in Scotland, prize money is paid out under UK tax law, and the top rate of tax on earnings above £125,140 is 45%. On a $3.2 million winner’s cheque, that could mean somewhere in the region of $1.44 million (around R23.8 million) going straight to HMRC. Add the caddie’s share, and the champion is already down to less than half the advertised figure before anything else is accounted for.
From there, most leading players also share a smaller bonus, often cited around 3%, with coaches, physiotherapists, and other support staff. Assuming an average of four such team members, that could account for a further $400,000 or so (roughly R6.6 million).
Add it up, and a $3.2 million headline prize can realistically shrink to take-home pay of just over $1 million (about R16.5 million), still an extraordinary week’s work, but a fraction of the number that gets printed on the leaderboard graphic. Of course, none of this accounts for sponsorship and endorsement income, which for the game’s biggest names typically dwarfs tournament earnings anyway, nor does it include the travel, accommodation, and logistical costs that players bear themselves.
The full purse breakdown
For context, here’s how the money is spread through the field this year:
| Finish | Payout (USD) | Approx. ZAR |
| 1st | $3,200,000 | R52.8m |
| 2nd | $1,842,000 | R30.4m |
| 3rd | $1,181,000 | R19.5m |
| 4th | $917,000 | R15.1m |
| 5th | $738,000 | R12.2m |
| 10th | $367,000 | R6.1m |
| 20th | $184,500 | R3.0m |
| 50th | $49,400 | R815,000 |
| 70th (last cut position) | $40,700 | R672,000 |
Players who miss the cut aren’t sent home empty-handed either. The leading 10 professionals and ties outside the cut line earn $12,900 (R213,000), the next 20 take $10,750 (R177,000), and the remainder collect $9,100 (R150,000), a reminder that even a disappointing week at The Open still pays better than most weeks on tour.
Prize money is only the most visible part of what The Open generates. The Championship accounts for roughly 80% of the R&A’s annual income of £156 million, funding everything from grassroots golf development and municipal course support to sustainability research and initiatives widening access to the sport. In that sense, the Open isn’t simply a tournament; it’s the financial engine behind the R&A’s work for the other 361 days of the year.
That funding requirement has pushed the event to keep growing. Royal Birkdale is expecting a record 300,000 spectators this week, a figure that has prompted changes to the hospitality infrastructure and course access in areas of the property that had remained largely untouched for decades.
The knock-on effect for host regions is significant too. According to Mastercard data, last year’s Open at Royal Portrush drove a 119% surge in local spending within 5km of the course, with bar and restaurant spending up 234% and 95% respectively. The 2024 Open at Royal Troon produced an 82% uplift within 3km, alongside a 44% rise in accommodation spending. Northern Ireland’s economy is estimated to have gained £89.2 million from hosting last year’s Championship; Scotland saw a comparable £87.3 million from Troon.
Merseyside is positioning itself to capture that kind of benefit repeatedly. The Liverpool City Region, Sefton and Wirral Councils have signed a memorandum of understanding with the R&A to host The Open at least three more times through 2050, with officials forecasting a £200 million boost to the region from this year’s Championship alone.