THE current year has truly provided the Australian golfing public with some outstanding performances on the US PGA Tour.
Those performances have proven extremely fruitful for seven of the 13 players on the tour. Still, only two Australian players, world number two Cameron Smith and Lucas Herbert, recorded victories.
Smith won three times – the Open Championship, The Players Championship and the Sentry Tournament of Champions. Only world number one, Scottie Scheffler, had more wins – four.
Herbert’s first PGA Tour victory came at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship on Halloween. It came in his third PGA Tour event after earning his card through the Korn Ferry Tour finals.
Seven of the 13 Aussies banked more than $1m in prizemoney alone.
All of this success adds up to some extremely lucrative paydays so let’s give you the rundown of the top Aussie money winners after the season ending Tour Championship won by Rory McIlroy.
For the record, Smith finished second on the US PGA Tour’s money list behind Scheffler, who played 25 tournaments, seven more than Smith, and banked $20,351,640.
Scott, finished 40th on the money list, Herbert 50th, Leishman 64th, Cameron Davis 66th, Matt Jones 70th, Jason Day 117th, Cameron Percy 157th, Aaron Baddeley 204th, Brett Drewitt 216th, Mark Hensby 219th, Greg Chalmers 223rd and John Senden 244th.
Of the 247 players who took home a PGA Tour cheque, there were 33 individual winners. Scheffler led the way with four victories while Smith, McIlroy, Sam Burns and Xander Schauffele each had three wins.
Patrick Cantlay, Tony Finau, Hideki Matsuyama and Max Homa had two victories each and a further 24 players recorded one win during the season.
Despite not recording a victory, American Cameron Young finished 10th on the money list winning $9,446,064. Another top player to finish the season winless was Collin Morikawa. He finished 20th on the money list and took home more than $7m.
The tour average prizemoney was $2,349,937.
Chief writer David Newbery has been living, breathing and writing and editing golf for more than 30 years. His extensive knowledge of the game comes from covering golf around the world. Hired by Inside Golf in 2009, David previously worked as the editor of The Golfer for 25 years and before that worked for numerous daily newspapers in Australia and overseas. The Brisbane-based journalist describes his golf game as “a work in progress”, but has had the privilege of playing golf with some of the game’s best players including nine-time major winner Gary Player. David enjoys travelling, reading, music, photography and spending time with family and friends – on and off the golf course. 
