The Digg Effect

Golf is a professional sport played in several countries and is a very popular and lucrative sport in US because of the prize money available. Golf has a very different structure from other team sports as majority of professional golfers don’t compete and their main income source is from club or teaching golf. Very few of the golfers get the chance to compete as Pro Golfers or Tournament Golfers. These touring professionals make their major income from tournament prize money and corporate golf endorsements. Tiger Woods is the highest earning golfer in the world as per Forbes magazine.

Tournament golf can be an unstable profession for those golfers who are not able to make it to those elite tournaments. Since participating in a tournament involves tournament entry fees, costs for travel and lodging expenses, as well as payments for a caddy. Professional golfers who get the chance to compete on international golf tours are known as tournament pros. Some of the popular golf tours include the PGA TOUR, the European Tour, the Champions Tour (for men over 50) and LPGA Tour (for women)

Top level professional golf consists of an year round schedule of weekly tournaments which are played all around the world. Most of the golf tournaments are organised into series called tours. There are separate golf tours for men and women. US professional golf tours for men are managed by PGA Tour. The PGA of America runs the PGA Championship and the Senior PGA Championship and co-organizes the Ryder Cup with the PGA European Tour. It is also responsible for regulating golf tours, arranging events and finding business or corporate sponsors. The governing body of golf in US is the United States Golf Association and for women golfers, Ladies Professional Golf Association (LGPA) runs the LGPA Tour, which runs from February to November each year. The PGA Tour also conducts an annual qualifying tournament (Q-School) which is a six-round tournament held every fall.

Four of the major golf championship’s for men’s golf are - The Masters, US Open, British Open and PGA Championship. Like the PGA TOUR, the LPGA has four majors tours as Kraft Nabisco Championship, U.S. Women’s Open, LPGA Championship and Women’s British Open. The U.S.-based Champions Tour recognizes five majors for seniors - Senior PGA Championship, U.S. Senior Open, Senior British Open, The Tradition and Senior Players Championship. The Professional Golf tour began a program for young golfers to compete amongst the best golfers in the junior PGA which conducts several junior tournaments across whole of the United States held every year.