(NEXSTAR) – The winner of the 2024 Masters Tournament will earn a huge chunk of change along with that sweet green jacket, but the runners-up aren’t exactly playing for peanuts either.
The total purse for the 2024 Masters Tournament is $20 million, an amount which exceeds the $18 million awarded to players in 2023. The winner will also take home $3.6 million — a bit more than $3.24 million won by 2023 champion Jon Rahm.
But that leaves just under $16.4 million to be awarded to the runners up. So how does it break down?
In 2023, $1,944,000 of the total purse was earmarked for the second-place finisher, while $1,224,000 was set aside for the third. (The tied second-place finishers that year ended up taking the average of those two prize amounts, but more on that later.) The rest of the competitors received smaller payouts depending on their scores, but even the player who finished 53rd in the rankings earned over $43,000.
In the case of a tie, the golfers who finish with the same score receive the average of the cash sums for their ranking. For instance, if two golfers tie for second, like Brooks Koepka and Phil Michelson did in 2023, they would split the total prize awarded for second and third place ($1,944,000 and $1,224,000, which averaged out to $1,584,000 apiece, in their case).
Many past champions earned only a fraction of that amount — a very small fraction, specifically. The winner of the first Masters Tournament in 1934 took home only $1,500 , and the top prize didn’t exceed $100,000 until 50 years later in 1984, according to Golf Monthly. Even adjusted for inflation, neither of those prize amounts comes anywhere close to the current winner’s share.
Then again, there’s more to the Masters than just the cash prizes. Did we mention the winner also gets to keep a tiny replica of the golf course’s clubhouse?
The 2024 Masters Tournament, played at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, runs from April 11 through April 14.
