PGA Fan Favorites Compared to the Money Leaders

Taking a look at the money leaders on the PGA Tour it’s an impressive list. The top of the charts right now are the usual suspect of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and Vijay Singh.

Some other greats are sprinkled throughout the top twenty as expected. Adam Scott, Jim Furyk, Sergio Garcia, Luke Donald, and Steve Stricker. These guys are incredibly fun to watch, and right now on top of the golf world. The money figures are quite impressive as we approach the mid-year point, and the British Open.

However when reviewing these names you’ve got to imagine a different ranking when taking a fan poll. Taking that a step further what would a player ranking poll look like. We decided to go ahead and place money vs. likability in an effort to see if there is a large difference between the two. Especially in a game when these players are generally seen as good guys across the board. At least when compared to football, basketball, and baseball. That doesn’t exactly apply quite as easily in those sports.

So without further delay lets take a look and see if money equals likeability.

First the current top 10 money list:
1 > Tiger Woods, $4,885,427
2 > Phil Mickelson, $4,120,588
3 > Vijay Singh, $3,719,394
4 > Zach Johnson, $2,985,910
5 > Rory Sabbatini, $2,820,390
6 > Charles Howell III, $2,521,999
7 > Adam Scott, $2,504,266
8 > Jim Furyk, $2,299,698
9 > K.J. Choi, $2,163,629
10 > Aaron Baddeley, $2,145,264

The top fan and player favorites list (out of top 20 money leaders):
1 > Tiger Woods, $4,885,427
2 > Phil Mickelson, $4,120,588
3 > Sergio Garcia, $2,034,446
4 > Adam Scott, $2,504,266
5 > David Toms, $1,952,977
6 > Jim Furyk, $2,299,698
7 > Luke Donald, $2,012,165
8 > Mark Calcavecchia, $1,816,710
9 > Charles Howell III, $2,521,999
10 > K.J. Choi, $2,163,629

Reviewing the lists what are your thoughts? It’s pretty interesting to think about when the importance of a players personality means a lot to the tour. So lets take take a look also at how the personality and money affect advertising revenue for players.

The top PGA Tour players in advertising revenue (this includes retired players and players not in the top 20):

1 > Tiger Woods, $89.4 million
2 > Phil Mickelson, $25.9 million
3 > Arnold Palmer, $23.7 million
4 > Ernie Els, $20.2 million
5 > Vijay Singh, $18.6 million
6 > Greg Norman, $17.6 million
7 > Sergio Garcia, $12.3 million
8 > Jack Nicklaus, $10.4 million

The purpose of this discussion was to mainly compare current PGA Tour money leaders, however I think the overall top players in advertising revenue lend some good insight. It shows that whether a player is likable or not they may still earn high returns in the advertising world. Secondly even if a player is generating little or no playing income, they can still earn a healthy living on their reputation.

If you look at someone like Vijay Singh for example who has been semi-controversial in the past, but then makes a boat-load of money from commercial work.

The great thing about the tour is the number of individual personalities. The fact that they represent themselves as their individual organization allows us to make better comparisons on money vs. sports fame. This definitely can’t be done as easily with other professional sports. Tennis could have similar results, but we’ll save that for another day.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Golf Topics, Top Ten Lists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.