This story came from a casual conversation between myself and Neil Paine, the sports editor at FiveThirtyEight. We were discussing how many golfers were defecting to the LIV Tournament and I was sure there was a way to visualize how it was essentially hollowing out golf’s top ranks. This was the result: a bar chart of sorts that starts at the top of the y axis instead of the bottom and shows the moment when critical mass hits and the players begin to depart, but also highlights the sections of ranked players where there isn’t an economic incentive to leave: you’ll notice the top 10 or so mostly stay, as well as a band in the middle.

LIV’s draw is rooted in its prize money, which we found two ways to show. Of those who left, they earned substantially more per tournament with LIV compared with the PGA. This is partially a function of LIV’s large purse sizes but also that it hosts far fewer tournaments. Still, the difference is stark (and this calculates only individual winnings and excludes the team money that LIV player also get).

The large purses are forcing the PGA to play catch-up. In 2021-22, it’s easy to see how much larger LIV’s purses are, bigger than the four PGA majors. In 2023, the PGA has announced increased purses for seven events, which still trail far behind the average that LIV will pay out over 14 events.

A scatter plot shows how substantially larger LIV purses are compared with the PGA and how the PGA is having to increase prize money to compete.