Tiger Woods has won the PGA Tour’s Player Impact Programme (PIP) for 2022 despite having played just nine events during the season.

Woods won $15m for topping the list, which is designed to reward players who boosted engagement and publicity for the PGA Tour.

First introduced in 2021 as a means of offering extra cash to the game’s most influential players, five of the players who appeared in the top 10 of the PIP last year – Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bubba Watson – have left to join LIV Golf.

While last year’s PIP bonus pool offered $40 million to the top 10 players, the 2022 PIP pool has increased to $100m and has doubled its reach from 10 players to 20.

The tour used five measurements for putting together the list: internet searches, the number of unique news articles that include a player’s name, duration that a player’s sponsor logos appeared on screen during Saturday and Sunday PGA Tour TV broadcasts, a player’s general awareness score among the US population, and social media score that considers a player’s reach, conversation and engagement metrics.

Rory McIlroy, who won the FedExCup, took second place, which comes with a $12m pay out, while Jordan Spieth took third, which comes with a $9m bonus. Victor Hovland finished in 20th spot and earned himself an extra $2m on top of the $4.68m he earned in prize money for the 2021-22 season.

Rickie Fowler, who placed 16th in the PIP list, had just three top-25 finishes in the 2021-22 season and finished 133rd in the money list with just over $1m in prize money, but he trebled his earnings with a $2m PIP pay out thanks to his popularity on social media. His Twitter account boasts over 1.6m followers.

Reigning US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick boosted his season’s earnings of $7.5m with a $5m bonus for finishing in eighth place, while 2019 Open Championship winner Shane Lowry finished 12th in the PIP list and almost doubled his season’s earnings from the PGA Tour with a $3m bonus on top of the $3.6m he collected in prize money.

Making the top 20 in this year’s PIP list will have major ramifications for those players in 2023, as the PGA Tour’s new schedule of 12 elevated events will require top-20 PIP players to compete in at least 20 tournaments across the season.

PGA TOUR 2022 PIP winners

1. Tiger Woods $15m
2. Rory McIlroy $12m
3. Jordan Spieth $9m
4. Justin Thomas $7.5m
5. Jon Rahm $6m
6. Scottie Scheffler $5.5m
7. Xander Schauffele $5m
8. Matt Fitzpatrick $5m
9. Will Zalatoris $5m
10. Tony Finau $5m
11. Collin Morikawa $3m
12. Shane Lowry $3m
13. Kevin Kisner $3m
14. Max Homa $3m
15. Billy Horschel $3m
16. Rickie Fowler $2m
17. Adam Scott $2m
18. Jason Day $2m
19. Patrick Cantlay $2m
20. Viktor Hovland $2m

Although outside the top 20, Hideki Matsuyama, Cameron Young and Sam Burns will also will receive a $2 million payment and be eligible for PIP events in 2023.

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Tiger Woods winning a golf competition in 2022 would have been a remarkable thought at the start of the year, but he’ll have to settle for a big win off the course. Woods has finished first in the PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program for the second consecutive year, this time coming in just ahead of his friend and business partner, Rory McIlroy.

Woods will collect $15 million for this acheivement while McIlroy takes home $12 million. Just below them in the rankings is another pair of good friends in Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas as the undefeated Presidents Cup duo finished third and fourth, respectively, with Jon Rahm rounding out the top five. The top four are scheduled to play in The Match VII on Dec. 10 in a 12-hole exhibition to benefit relief efforts for Hurricane Ian.

Woods took first last year even though he didn’t play a single competitive round of golf on the PGA Tour. That first-place finish was worth $10 million; this year’s prize was slightly more at $15 million, as the overall purse for the PIP was raised from $40 million in 2021 to $100 million in 2022, according to PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan earlier this year at the Tour Championship. 

Woods only played nine total rounds in 2022 and ranked 41st in Nielsen Brand Exposure which essentially measures the amount of TV time a player receives during weekend coverage. Woods was able to overcome this shortcoming by ranking first in the four other categories.

2022 PIP Scoring Criteria

• Google: Google search data
• Meltwater: Mentions in the media
• Nielsen: Exposure on weekend TV coverage 
• Q-Score: Awareness among the general public
• MVP Index: Social media engagement and reach

The Tour has upped its prize money across the board this year and into 2023. Not only did it take the PIP fund from $40 million to $100 million, but it also expanded the pool of recipients from 10 to 20, raised several PGA Tour purses to $20 million and continues to invest in the FedEx Cup prize fund (it moved from $15 million a year ago to $18 million this year).

This is welcomed news for two-time major winner Collin Morikawa. The last man out in 2021, Morikawa remained in the 11th spot in the rankings, but unlike last year, will be rewarded a payout amounting to $3 million. Social media guru Max Homa, fan-favorite Rickie Fowler and Australian heartthrob Adam Scott all check in within the 11-20 range in the standings. 

2022 PIP Results, Payouts

Players who would have qualified under 2023 criteria

What’s new in 2023?

Matsuyama, Young and Burns may not have cracked the top 20 in the 2022 PIP, but the PGA Tour went ahead and wrote them a check anyways. All three would have been inside the magic number if the new criteria was in place, which limits the social media aspect of the scoring. The MVP Index and the Q-Score will be replaced by MARC Golf Fan Awareness and MARC General Population Awareness. These two new categories will serve as an easier way to measure a player’s popularity among adults and golf fans.

Why is the PIP important?

Outside of the influx of money to the PGA Tour’s top players, the PIP will be used as a key identifier moving forward. The top 20 players in the PIP this year will be expected to play the Tour’s new elevated schedule in 2023, which includes 13 non-majors with massive prize money and, ostensibly, all the top players in the world. 

This flood of cash was built to combat LIV Golf and the players who have left the PGA Tour for significant raises. Interestingly, one of LIV’s participants actually had one of the best takes about Tiger and the PIP I’ve seen. Pat Perez spoke about it at the Genesis Invitational way back in February when he was still part of the PGA Tour.

“It’s kind of a joke, but like I said, the PIP program’s kind of a joke,” said Perez. “Give Tiger the 40 [million] and say we owe you another zero. They owe Tiger $400, $500 million easily. There should be no program. Here you go, here’s 50, thanks for being incredible, here’s the money we owe you because you brought in hundreds of millions of dollars to us. Guys like me, to be able to make, you know, a couple million dollars a year is unbelievable and it’s only because of him. It’s only because of him, you know. So like I said, I’m in line with Tiger. But if Phil is pushing for more money towards our tour and fighting for it, that’d be great, but he seems to be so on the Saudi side that it’s hard to believe that he’s actually fighting for that.”

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Tiger Woods winning a golf competition in 2022 would have been a remarkable thought at the start of the year, but he’ll have to settle for a big win off the course. Woods has finished first in the PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program for the second consecutive year, this time coming in just ahead of his friend and business partner, Rory McIlroy, according to the Associated Press.

Woods took first last year even though he didn’t play a single competitive round of golf on the PGA Tour. That first-place finish was worth $10 million; this one was significantly more, however, as the overall purse for the PIP was raised from $40 million in 2021 to $100 million in 2022, according to PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan earlier this year at the Tour Championship. Woods only played nine total rounds in 2022, but each one of them received significant attention from everyone in the golf world, which is broadly the way one ranks highly in the annual PIP. He played four at the Masters, three at the PGA Championship and two at the Open Championship at St. Andrews.

The Tour has upped its prize money across the board this year and into 2023. Not only did it take the PIP fund from $40 million to $100 million, but it also expanded the pool of recipients from 10 to 20, raised several PGA Tour purses to $20 million and continues to invest in the FedEx Cup prize fund (it moved from $15 million a year ago to $18 million this year).

Woods was a lock to win this prize again from the moment he taunted Phil Mickelson on Twitter after Mickelson bragged that he had won the 2021 prize when in fact he had not.

According to the AP, McIlroy received $12 million for coming in second place, which puts his annual PGA Tour earnings at right around $40 million. This is significant because it’s nearly twice as much as the most he’s ever earned before. His previous career-high earnings came back in 2019 when he won the FedEx Cup and $15 million first prize to go with another $8 million in the regular season.

As was pointed out in the AP, there were two rubrics used this year to determine the PIP.

Two lists were in play — the original PIP plan that used such metrics as social media engagement, brand exposure, Q-rating, Internet searches and awareness, and the new criteria that leans more on media mentions and broadcast exposure than social media.

The PIP also was expanded to 20 players instead of 10, and using both lists for 2022, some 23 players are expected to receive bonus money from the $100 million program.

This influx of money was built to combat LIV Golf and the players who have left the PGA Tour for significant raises from moving from the Tour to LIV. Interestingly, one of LIV’s participants actually had one of the best takes about Tiger and the PIP I’ve seen. Pat Perez spoke about it at the Genesis Invitational way back in February when he was still part of the PGA Tour.

“It’s kind of a joke, but like I said, the PIP program’s kind of a joke,” said Perez. “Give Tiger the 40 [million] and say we owe you another zero. They owe Tiger $400, $500 million easily. There should be no program. Here you go, here’s 50, thanks for being incredible, here’s the money we owe you because you brought in hundreds of millions of dollars to us. Guys like me, to be able to make, you know, a couple million dollars a year is unbelievable and it’s only because of him. It’s only because of him, you know. So like I said, I’m in line with Tiger. But if Phil is pushing for more money towards our tour and fighting for it, that’d be great, but he seems to be so on the Saudi side that it’s hard to believe that he’s actually fighting for that.”

Mickelson finished second to Tiger in last year’s PIP.

The top 20 players in the PIP this year will be expected to play the Tour’s new elevated schedule in 2023, which includes 13 non-majors with massive prize money and, ostensibly, all the top players in the world. McIlroy and Woods were vital to creating the unity for this to come about during a meeting in Delaware during the FedEx Cup Playoffs earlier this year.

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A dramatic final day’s play at the PGA Championship at Southern Hills resulted in Justin Thomas winning his second Wanamaker Trophy after a play-off with fellow American Will Zalatoris

As a past winner of the PGA Championship, you know how hard it is to win these things, but starting out on Sunday, seven shots back, and with six players in front of you, how much of a chance did think you had of lifting the trophy?
When I looked at the leaderboard on Saturday night I could see that there were a lot of good players ahead of me, but I also knew that none of them had won a major before, and some hadn’t won a PGA Tour event, so I knew there would be some nerves out there, just as I felt them back in 2017.
I hadn’t won in a while, and it had been five years since my PGA win, so I while I wasn’t feeling out of it, I knew that it would take a pretty good round from me and for others to fall back for me to have any kind of chance. To be honest, I only really thought I had a chance to win once I found out I was in a play-off. Up until that point my fate was kind of in the hands of others. I posted a score, but I didn’t think it would be a winning one. I thought six or seven under was doable, so when I missed that birdie putt on 18 in regulation I felt like it could have been an important one.

So what was your gameplan going out there on Sunday? Were you trying to be aggressive or avoid making mistakes?
I was trying not to play the field or think about what others were doing. I just went about my business, trying to execute each shot as well as I could, and then wherever it ended up, I just gave my club to Bones [his caddie, Jim McKay] and then moved on to the next shot and so on. Bones did an unbelievable job of keeping me in the moment and keeping me patient. Southern Hills is a very hard golf course, so you had to be patient, and I just hung in there, tried to stay positive and got the job done.

Did you feel that chasing from behind gave you the opportunity to play with a bit more freedom than the leaders?
I didn’t look at the leaderboards on Sunday, so I didn’t know where I necessarily was. When I made the birdie on 12, it felt like there was a different energy from the crowd and I got a sense that I might have been in the mix, but I didn’t know where I was at, but I’m in striking distance.

You were the only player in the last seven groups who broke par. How much of that would you attribute to the difficulty of the conditions and pins and frankly, to the nerves, given so much lack of major experience out there?
I would say the golf course and the wind probably 80 per cent, and I would say the difficulty of winning a golf tournament and a major, 20 per cent, if I had to put a number on it. I mean, it was tough. The wind kept switching and it was easy to second guess yourself. A lot of potential birdie holes could turn into bogey holes and worse if you got things slightly wrong, and that’s kind of what we saw happen out there. Southern Hills is a great major championship venue, and it tests all facets of your game.

When do you think your experience of having ‘been there and got the t-shirt’ came into play during the final round?
It definitely came into play during those last three or four holes. I played the back nine beautifully. The holes I didn’t make birdie or had birdie putts I had really good looks, and I hit great putts that just didn’t go in. And the holes I missed the green I was able to salvage a par, which is what you have to do to win a major. I kept telling myself I’ve been here before. Although it’s been five years, it was somewhere down in there, and that really helped.

Is it possible to feel a bit of sympathy for Mito Pereira, with the wheels coming off like that on 18?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in ideal circumstances you want to win a golf tournament, you don’t want someone to lose it, but that’s golf. There have been many times in my career when I feel like I’ve let a tournament get away. It’s brutal. It’s not fun. But at the same time, I’m sure Mito will be able to look back at it later and reflect, he’ll be able to learn from it and be better from it. There’s no reason for him to hang his head – he played unbelievable golf this week.

The weather changed so much over the course of the four rounds. How differently did it play from day-to-day and what factor did the weather play in the result?
I don’t think I’ve ever played in a major – outside of the Open Championship, of course – where we’ve had such a severe change in conditions during the course of the tournament. When I played on Friday morning, the wind was howling out of the south, and then on Saturday it was cold and blowing out of the north. That doesn’t happen often, let alone in a major championship and at a place like this. It just brought out another side of everybody. It challenged us, but I was also excited, because although I would have loved to have seen this place in a north wind, I hadn’t before. But at the same time, I’m sure a lot of guys hadn’t either. It probably helped that I hadn’t been here that often because it was a lot easier to throw the past two rounds of memory out and just almost take each hole from scratch for what it was. It was very tough, but everybody had to deal with the same kind of stuff.

Given that your father and your grandfather were both PGA Professionals, can talk about how special it is to win the PGA of America’s Major Championship?
Yeah, it’s very, very special. I’m pleased. At this point any of them is great; I don’t care which one it is. As Tom Brady always says, your favourite Super Bowl is your next one, and that’s what my favourite major is. And at this moment, it’s definitely the PGA. I know somewhere up there, grandpa was watching and pulling for me. It’s very, very cool to be able to share this victory with my family.

In what ways are you a better golfer now than when you won the PGA back in 2017?
Five years is a long time, especially at this stage of my life, so I’ve definitely matured quite a bit a player and as a person. I would like to think that everything has just gotten a little better, although I couldn’t put my finger on anything specific element of my game, but it those 1% increments that can make the difference. There is nothing that is monumentally better than it was five years ago, but it’s all improved just a little bit and it all came together this week. It feels like it’s a lot harder to win on tour than it did five years ago, as the strength in depth feels much deeper than it did when i first started out. My world ranking had fallen without me thinking that I was playing any worse, and that just shows how quickly you can drop when you’re not winning.

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Well past the midway point of the 2022 season, Scottie Scheffler was on an absolute heater. While that victory pace may have cooled over the final couple months, Scheffler capped a dream season Saturday by capturing the 2022 PGA Tour Player of the Year award. Scheffler, 26, received the nod from his peers — the award is voted on by other PGA Tour players — over Rory McIlroy and Cameron Smith after picking up four wins at tournaments that ranked among the top 12 worldwide in strength of field.

Scheffler opened with wins at the Phoenix Open, Arnold Palmer Invitational and WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play before acquiring his first career major championship victory at the Masters. In winning four tournaments across six starts, Scheffler became the top-ranked golfer in the world and ended the season with more money earned on the PGA Tour across a single season than any golfer in history ($14.05 million). Among other earnings, he also picked up $5.75 million in FedEx Cup bonus funds and $4 million from the Comcast Business Tour Top 10 to capture a grand total of $24.8 million this season.

Receiving 89% of the votes over McIlroy and Smith, his award was announced Saturday on ESPN’s “College GameDay.” Scheffler, a former golfer at Texas, was honored ahead of the Longhorns’ Week 2 college football game against No. 1 Alabama.

McIlroy, a three-time winner of this award, was also a three-time winner on the PGA Tour this season with his victories coming at the CJ Cup last fall and then over the summer at the RBC Canadian Open in June and in dramatic fashion to conclude the season at the Tour Championship where he topped Scheffler to pocket $18 million. That final win at a huge-money event felt like a culmination of McIlroy’s incredible season, one in which he posted top-eight finishes at all four majors including the Masters (2nd), PGA Championship (8th), U.S. Open (T5) and Open Championship (3rd). He ended the year with $28 million more in his bank account between tournament earnings, FedEx Cup bonuses and the Comcast Business Top 10 payout.

“Scottie Scheffler is going to win the Player of the Year,” said McIlroy after beating him at the Tour Championship. “There’s no doubt about that. You know, it would have been fitting for him to end his breakout season with a FedEx Cup title. I think he … deserves this maybe more than I deserve it. He played an unbelievable season. He didn’t have his best stuff today, and I played well and took advantage of that.

“Scottie will have plenty more chances to win FedEx Cups. Hell of a player, hell of a competitor. Even better person. Love his family. Look, it’s hard. You don’t really know what to say on the 18th green because he’s had such a great year, but he’ll be back, and he’s a great player, and I told him this certainly isn’t the last time that we’re going to have these battles on the golf course.”

It was Smith who ultimately won that Open by overcoming a four-shot deficit after 54 holes by posting a scintillating 64 across the final 18 at St. Andrews, jumping McIlroy in the process. Smith also won the Players Championship and a Tournament of Champions event, posting a T3 finish at the Masters along the way. However, we won’t see him on the PGA Tour next season as he parlayed his Open victory into a big-money contract with LIV Golf.

Each of the prior three PGA Tour Player of the Year winners doubled as the FedEx Cup and Tour Championship winner, a streak that has now come to an end. Scheffler, however, reached a new milestone as the first golfer to win Player of the Year on the Korn Ferry Tour (2019), PGA Tour Rookie of the Year (2020) and PGA Tour Player of the Year since the awards were first established in 1990.

“On behalf of the PGA Tour, congratulations to Scottie on his remarkable season and his unprecedented achievements,” said PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan. “Undoubtably, one of the highest compliments a player can receive is the endorsement from his peers, and the fact that Scottie’s season was both dominant and consistent spoke volumes to the membership. And as gratifying as it has been to see his development on the course over the last several years, we are equally thankful that Scottie has embraced the role as an ambassador of the PGA Tour and the game of golf. With young stars like Scottie leading the way, the PGA Tour is in great hands for many years to come.”

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