Tranlate this title What Tiger Woods would have really earned in spanish

Golf has never been the same since Tiger Woods burst onto the scene at the end of the last century. And one of the victims of the revolution his presence brought about at every level of the sport has a victim… in himself. Because if golfers are immensely better paid today than they were 25 years ago, it’s thanks to Tiger, who elevated the sport to the status of a mass phenomenon, and to the hyperinflation generated five years ago by the introduction of the LIV. However, he arrived late to this latter phenomenon.

Tiger Woods, earnings

A good example is the data published in X by statistician Lou Stagner, who has painstakingly translated Woods’ career earnings to the current market. The figures are meaningless. They are even less than what the LIV has been paying to enroll players in a product that hasn’t generated a single penny in profit. And even the prizes the PGA is now distributing to its players in response to that don’t even come close to reflecting what they generate.

That’s why it took Scottie Scheffler seven seasons and 22 victories to reach $130 million (about €112 million at the current exchange rate) in on-course earnings, a figure that surpasses Tiger Woods, who earned $121 million (about €104 million) for his 82 wins on the tour, a record he shares with Sam Snead, spread between 1996 and 2019. There’s no reasonable explanation for this, beyond the (increasingly slow but inexorable) rise in the cost of living. It’s simply because someone who apparently had no other choice decided it would be this way. Even more incredible is Nicklaus’s figure, who earned ‘only’ $5.7 million (€4.9 million) in a career that, in today’s terms, would have netted him no less than $532 million (€459 million).

Stagner has crunched the numbers, and that has led him to other, quite striking figures. His calculations show that, had he achieved the same results under the current circumstances, the Californian’s bank account would have taken a dramatic leap. Those 120 million dollars, based on 2024 prize money figures, would have become 404 million. A closer look makes this difference clearer. Consider the check Tiger received for his 1997 Masters victory. His first major earned him $486,000 (€419,000), which would be equivalent to $950,000 (around €820,000) today. In contrast, Scheffler’s first green jacket was rewarded with $3.6 million (€3.1 million). The conclusion, as Stagner himself says, is that everyday inflation can’t keep up with the inflation experienced by professional golf. And the bad news is that bubbles usually eventually burst.