Two years ago, the U.S. Women’s Open’s purse was $5.5 million. This week, the prize money payout at Pebble Beach Golf Links is an impressive $11 million, a literal exponential rise that speaks to what the USGA thinks of women’s golf and its flagship women’s championship.
“I remember last year, maybe a year and a half ago when we announced going from a $5½ million purse to a 10. Somebody said to me, what do you think that will do women’s golf? I said, I don’t know what it’ll do for women’s golf, but I’m pretty sure a couple years from now we’re going to be talking about higher purses across the board, and that’s where we are.”
Indeed, just two weeks ago, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship bumped up its overall prize money payout by $1 million to $10 million, the sixth straight year it’s has increased.
Indeed, here’s a breakdown of the prize money payouts for the other four women’s majors. With the AIG Women’s Open and Evian Championship still to come, there’s an expectation that both will also increase their prize money payouts to some degree.
KPMG Women’s PGA Championship: $10 million
AIG Women’s Open: $7.3 million (2022)
Evian Championship: $6.5 million (2022)
Chevron Championship: $5.1 million
As for the winner’s payday in the Women’s Open, the champion on Sunday at Pebble Beach will earn a record $2 million, the largest payout in women’s golf history. The runner-up gets more than $1 million, a first in that regard as well. Even if you don’t make the cut at the U.S. Women’s Open, you’re still walking away with a nice return: $8,000, a doubling of the “stipend” given to pros leaving after 36 holes compared to a year ago.
As we noted a year ago, what’s interesting to note is that the overall purse for the U.S. Women’s Open didn’t pass $8,000 until 1963, the 18th year of the championship. And a winner of the major didn’t make $8,000 until 1975.
Here’s a historic look at the prize money payouts in the championship for context about this year’s historic payday:
YEAR: WINNER, OVERALL PURSE, WINNER’S SHARE
1947: Betty Jameson, $7,500, $1,200
1965: Sandra Spuzich, $20,000 $4,000
1975: Sandra Palmer, $55,000, $8,044
1978: Hollis Stacy, $100,000, $15,000
1990: Betsy King, $500,000, $85,000
1995: Annika Sorenstam, $1 million, $175,000
2000: Karrie Webb, $2.75 million, $500,000
2014: Michelle Wie, $4 million, $720,000
2017: Sung-Hyun Park, $5 million, $900,000
2019: Jeongeun Lee6, $5.5 million, $1 million
2022: Minjee Lee, $10 million, $1.8 million
On Saturday, the USGA officially released the overall prize money payout breakdown for the golfers who made the cut a Pebble Beach. Here are the payouts for each place. Come back after the finish of the championship on Sunday and we’ll update with individual names and official totals. (All pros who missed the cut also received $8,000.)