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This year in golf has revolved around one singular item -- money. That will not change this week at the Tour Championship as the final event of the FedEx Cup Playoffs is set to reward all of those who have qualified for play at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. With only 29 men in the field after Will Zalatoris' withdrawal, the minimum a competitor will receive for his efforts this week is a cool $510,000 as Zalatoris will be awarded the last-place prize of $500,000.

Patrick Cantlay and Zalatoris each collected $2.7 million for their victories in the first two postseason events. An elevated purse compared to the regular season, the winner's share from Memphis and Wilmington is still nothing compared to that of Atlanta as it would not even clear the top-five paydays for the Tour Championship. Between prize money and FedEx Cup bonuses, a total purse of $75 million will be at stake at the postseason finale.

While $15 million was the purse the last two weeks, $18 million will be the grand prize for the winner of the Tour Championship. To contextualize just how much money this is, this sum surpasses the combined on-course earnings of Cameron Smith and Xander Schauffele in 2022 who boast six victories between them including the Players Championship and The Open.

Providing even further context, below we will dissect just how much $18 million would mean to each participant in the Tour Championship as it is surely not the same to Rory McIlroy as it is to Sahith Theegala for example. Looking at their career on-course earnings -- excluding past FedEx Cup winnings as they are classified as bonuses -- the prize money becomes even more obscene.

How big winning the Tour Championship would be

GolferScoreCareer earningsPercentage $18 million would be
of career earnings

Scottie Scheffler

-10

$21.6M

83%

Patrick Cantlay

-8

$31.7M

57%

Will Zalatoris

-7

$12.9M

140%

Xander Schauffele

-6

$30.5M

59%

Sam Burns

-5

$14.6M

123%

Cameron Smith

-4

$27.0M

67%

Rory McIlroy

-4

$66.2M

27%

Tony Finau

-4

$31.5M

57%

Sepp Straka

-4

$7.9M

228%

Sungjae Im

-4

$16.9M

107%

Jon Rahm

-3

$35.0M

51%

Scott Stallings

-3

$16.7M

108%

Justin Thomas

-3

$50.9M

35%

Cameron Young

-3

$6.5M

277%

Matt Fitzpatrick

-3

$14.1M

128%

Max Homa

-2

$12.8M

141%

Hideki Matsuyama

-2

$40.2M

45%

Jordan Spieth

-2

$52.8M

34%

Joaquin Niemann

-2

$14.6M

123%

Viktor Hovland

-2

$12.6M

143%

Collin Morikawa

-1

$18.9M

95%

Billy Horschel

-1

$33.4M

54%

Tom Hoge

-1

$11.4M

158%

Corey Conners

-1

$13.0M

138%

Brian Harman

-1

$23.7M

76%

K.H. Lee

E

$8.3M

217%

J.T. Poston

E

$10.3M

175%

Sahith Theegala

E

$3.3M

545%

Adam Scott

E

$59.8M

30%

Aaron Wise

E

$10.8M

167%

Would you look at that -- it was an even split before Zalatoris had to withdraw due to his back injury. Now only 14 players will more than double their on-course earnings with a triumph at the Tour Championship with Theegala multiplying his total by more than 5 times if he is able to pull off the improbable. While the Pepperdine product still has a long way to go in his career, a veteran such as Stallings is an interesting case to look at.

A three-time winner on the PGA Tour, Stallings nearly added a fourth title last week at the BMW Championship before ultimately falling one stroke shy of Cantlay. He would roughly double his career earnings in one week with a victory at East Lake after more than a decade on the PGA Tour. The same is true for Morikawa, Im, Burns and Niemann although they have only been on tour for a handful of years.

On the other end of the spectrum, I would not necessarily classify $18 million as a drop in the bucket, but McIlroy, Scott, Thomas and Spieth all check in inside the top 10 on the career money leaders list for the PGA Tour. That is not to say the dollar figures may not creep into the back of their minds, but they may not feel the heat as much as their counterparts down the stretch.