Tiger Woods wins $15m in PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program

NEW YORK: Tiger Woods is making a bigger impact off the course than inside the ropes, and he was rewarded with a $15 million bonus from the PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program.

Woods won the award for the second straight year while playing slightly more often.

He was recovering from a car crash in 2021 and played only two rounds of the PNC Championship with his son, Charlie. This year, he played in three majors, making it to the weekend in two of them, finishing 72 holes only in the Masters.

Woods still ranked No. 1 in four of the five PIP categories. The exception was “TV Sponsor Exposure,” which is the length of time a player’s sponsor logos appear on the screen during weekend rounds. He played only three of those.

Rory McIlroy finished second, as reported by The Associated Press two weeks ago, and received a $12 million bonus. Jordan Spieth narrowly beat out Justin Thomas for third place — Spieth got $9 million, Thomas $7.5 million — with Jon Rahm ($6 million) in fifth.

Masters champion Scottie Scheffler was sixth ($5.5 million). The next four each received $5 million — Xander Schauffele, US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick, Will Zalatoris and Tony Finau.

Collin Morikawa won the British Open and a World Golf Championship last year and finished out of the money at No. 11 when the program rewarded only 10 players. Now the bonus pool has doubled to $100 million and expanded to 20 players.

He didn’t win this year and still finished 11th.

The pool was $106 million this year because the PGA Tour used two sets of criteria — the one used last year, and the new one going forward that uses “general population awareness” and “golf fan awareness” to replace Q-rating and social media.

Hideki Matsuyama, Cameron Young and Sam