Scottie Scheffler told he has LIV to thank for huge earnings

Bubba Watson insists LIV Golf has inadvertently helped Scottie Scheffler earn record-shattering prize money in 2024.

The breakaway LIV league is celebrating its 100th round of competition this week at Greenbrier, two years on since the surreal inaugural launch event at Centurion in June 2022.

Two-time Masters champion Watson – the captain of LIV’s Range Goats GC team – has been there since almost the very start.

“When I think about going through the motions of deciding I wanted to come to LIV, I thought about the 10-year plan, on paper, what the goals were, and it’s met my expectations. It’s been better than that,” Watson said ahead of this week’s $25m event in West Virginia.

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“We’ve changed the face of golf. So to be on that side of history is pretty special.”

Watson is adamant he is on the “right side of history” after ditching the PGA Tour for the Saudi-backed circuit. The 45-year-old even compared the LIV converters to the icons responsible for the PGA Tour’s seismic breakaway from the PGA of America back in 1968.

“I know years ago when the PGA Tour made that same decision, and when I’m saying years ago, we’re talking ’50s, ’40s, whatever year Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus and them made the other tour, so we’re a part of that,” he said. “It’s an honour and a privilege to say I’m a part of that.

“Scottie Scheffler has made a lot of money this year because of the changes that we’ve started putting in place.”

The world No.1 Scheffler has banked $28million in prize money alone this season, winning his second Masters title and six other times, dominating the PGA Tour’s signature events.

The lucrative signature events with boosted purses were set up by the PGA Tour in 2023, in direct response to the threat posed by the LIV league in luring their best players.

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At the FedEx Cup Playoffs this month, Scheffler will claim a $25million bonus if he is crowned champion in the Tour Championship at East Lake. That’s as well as the $8million cheque already banked for topping the Comcast Business Top Ten, a bonus pool divvied out after the end of the PGA Tour regular season.

But Scheffler is still far from convinced that the FedEx Cup setup – with staggered scoring to give all 30 players a chance in the showpiece finale at East Lake – is the fairest way to determine the best player of the year.

“I think it’s silly,” he said ahead of this week’s $20m FedEx Cup St Jude Championship in Memphis. “You can’t call it a season-long race and have it come down to one tournament.

“Hypothetically, we get to East Lake and my neck flares up and it doesn’t heal the way it did at THE PLAYERS, I finish 30th in the FedExCup because I had to withdraw from the last tournament?

“Is that really the season-long race? No. It is what it is.”

Ben Parsons joined bunkered as a Content Producer in 2023 and is the man to come to for all of the latest news, across both the professional and amateur games. Formerly of The Mirror and Press Association, he is a member at Halifax Golf Club and is a long-suffering fan of both Manchester United and the Wales rugby team.