Among Spaun’s five top-10 finishes were two second-place results \u2013 at the Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches and The Players Championship \u2013 which are among the highest-paying events on the PGA Tour calendar.<\/p>\n
His surprising performance this season is underscored by the fact that he only earned $1.65 million in prize money last year, with his previous best season total being $3 million.<\/p>\n
The Californian will look to continue his remarkable ascent in the opening round of the FedExCup Playoffs this week at the FedEx St Jude Championship.<\/p>\n
DON’T MISS: <\/p>\n
The FedExCup Playoffs are a trio of events with progressively smaller fields: 70 at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, 50 at the BMW Championship, and 30 at the TOUR Championship.<\/p>\n
This places Spaun in an excellent position to surpass the $700,000 he needs to outdo golf legend Woods’ most lucrative year in prize money.<\/p>\n
The 15-time major winner is often celebrated as one of the greatest golfers of all time. Yet, he only surpassed the $10M mark in earnings in three years \u2013 2005, 2007, and 2009 \u2013 with his highest-earning year being 2007 at $10.87M, despite claiming seven PGA Tour wins, including the PGA Championship.<\/p>\n
This highlights just how significantly prize money has escalated in recent years, with current PGA Tour winnings on any given Sunday dwarfing what Woods and his peers once earned.<\/p>\n
Although Spaun has seen recent success, he still has quite a distance to cover to reach Woods’ career achievements, which boast 82 Tour victories and a total prize collection of $121M before injuries impacted his game.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Spaun’s journey from a regular competitor to a major champion serves as a motivational story of determination for any aspiring golf professional. “I never thought I would win a major \u2013 a few years ago I was just trying to get in them,” he reflected post-victory.<\/p>\n
“It’s a big difference, having the spotlight on me now and the expectations, but all I can do is just rely on the experiences I’ve had \u2013 coming down the stretch at the U.S. Open, getting myself in the play-off at The Players Championship.<\/p>\n
“I’ve had way bigger challenges \u2013 whether it’s life or golf or losing my card \u2013 than just being more in the spotlight, so I’m learning to embrace it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Among Spaun’s five top-10 finishes were two second-place results \u2013 at the Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,9921,15812,1747,43577,85,9244],"class_list":{"0":"post-51929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-golf-section","12":"tag-j-j-spaun","13":"tag-pga-tour","14":"tag-prize-money-record","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-tiger-woods"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}