Chris DiMarco joked that he is “kind of hoping” that LIV Golf buys the over-50s PGA Tour Champions so the players can “play for a little real money”.
The three-time PGA Tour winner, 55, shared some hard-hitting views on the Subpar podcast with Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz amid golf’s influx of Saudi money and the rivalry between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.
He also called the average of $2m purses on the PGA Tour Champions a “joke”.
LIV Golf plays for $25m each event and former PGA Tour stars like Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson are just some of the names to have left the PGA Tour for nine-figure fees.
The PGA Tour has been forced to up its prize pools in response, and even created the lucrative $100m Player Impact Program bonus scheme, which has been reduced to $50m this year.
DiMarco, who has $22.7m PGA Tour career earnings, referenced the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass, which had a $25m purse and saw Scottie Scheffler bag $4.5m and four others pick up over $1m.
“Well, we’re kind of hoping that LIV buys the Champions Tour,” he joked on the podcast.
“Let’s play for a little real money out here. I mean, this is kind of a joke when we’re averaging two million. There were like seven guys last week from TPC that made more money than our purses.”
“I was fortunate you know you came in about the same time as Tiger did so I got to go from we’re playing to a million dollars to all of sudden we’re playing for four and five and I thought that was you know ‘now we’re playing for so much money’ and then now Tiger and Rory and all these guys and tour has just gotten even way more than it was.
“All of a sudden they found $150m out of nowhere and added that to the purses and now they’ve got 14 elevated events at what $20m a piece and TPC at $25m.
World No.1 Scottie Scheffler won $4.5m at the Players Championship
(Image credit: Getty Images)
“So obviously the money’s there, I was fortunate to play during the Tiger era and got to play for some good money but not like the kind of money these guys are playing for. It seems like every week there’s another person passing me on the career money in a couple of years of being on tour.”
DiMarco, who famously lost to Tiger Woods in the 2005 Masters playoff after Woods’ iconic chip-in on the 16th in regulation,…
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