Raising the million-dollar bar

With big money pouring into golf, there are already 77 millionaires on the PGA Tour.

There was a strange buzz in the air before the start of the 1989 PGA season. A special press conference was called to announce what then seemed to be a monumental achievement for a player in a single season; to win a million dollars.

While Curtis Strange won that prize 15 years ago, the 2004 season is set to touch $11 million. A few years ago, earnings of this kind were unthinkable. In the seventies, legendary golfers like Jack Nicklaus had earned $316,911 in his best season. Today, this amount would be insufficient to even keep the Tour card. In fact, over 160 players would have won more than that this year. In that glorious year, Nicklaus the "Golden Bear" had won not less than seven titles.

Today, when a normal $5 million event earns the winner a whopping $900,000, a million dollar seems like small change. In 2000, when Tiger Woods won three Majors among his nine titles, he had crossed the $9 million mark. Vijay Singh is now threatening to raise the bar to $11 million after vaulting past a landmark of $10 million recently.

This will depend on how Singh performs at the Tour Championships, the season's final event. This is similar to Bob Beamon's leaping feat at the Mexico Olympics in 1968. Beamon eschewed the 28ft mark and took the world long jump record from 27 ft to 29 ft-plus in a matter of seconds. The record stood until Mike Powell went past it 23 years later, in 1991.

Singh's Beamon-esque effort is also a commentary on the amazing amounts of money that have now come into the PGA Tour, which over 50-weeks is now worth in excess of $ 230 million. With one more event to go, there are already 77 millionaires this season on the PGA Tour. And that million-dollar mark could be breached by another two or three players. The top 25 have won more than $2 million and the top ten would have earned more than $3 million.

But Singh's effort is not only about money. His earnings are almost double that of the second placed Phil Mickelson, who till this week had collected $5.67 million as compared to Vijay's $10.72 million. Vijay has won nine times and the next best has been three times by Ernie Els, who earned $5.63 million on the US Tour this year .

On the other side of the Atlantic, Ernie Els broke through the barrier in Europe, where for the second successive year he has emerged as the No.1 golfer. Els, who divides his time between the US and European Tours, became the first player to cross the $4 million mark in Europe.

In this season of new record earnings, Indians too have made a mark on their home tour. While Arjun Atwal came close to making half a million dollars in the US but finished 143rd in rankings, 22-year-old Ashok Kumar has already crossed Rs 7 lakh in prize money from just six events at home, four of which he won on the trot.

The record on the Indian Tour belongs to Mukesh Kumar, who reigned as India's top golfer on the home circuit with Rs 21.77 lakh in 2002-03. Mukesh had won 10 of the 21 events he played that season and had grossed Rs 17.51 lakh with six wins in the previous season. In 1996-97, Gaurav Ghei crossed the Rs 10 lakh mark and became the first Indian to win five of the nine tournaments. He finished in the top 10 in the rest of the matches in a superb season.

Last year, the prize money had dropped on the Indian Tour as many sponsors pulled out at the last minute and the winnings of No. 1 Ashok Kumar had dropped to Rs 12 lakh. But Ashok has already amassed Rs 7.09 lakh in six events this year, and there are at least 15 events to go till the season ends in April 2005.