Prize money at the 2025 Masters has doubled in under a decade, with the winner at Augusta National this week set to earn $3.6m (£2.8m). The total prize fund at the year’s first major has now swollen to $20m (£15.5m) and the top three players are all assured of seven-figure payouts. As recently as 2016, winner Danny Willett collected $1.8m in prize money from a pot of $10m. Since then, financial rewards in golf have mushroomed. In the three years from 2021 to 2024 alone, Masters prize money rocketed by 74 per cent to its current level. This year’s figures are still provisional but are expected to remain the same. How Masters prize money compares to other majors The Masters has unique cachet but it’s not the most lucrative of the four men’s majors – that’s the US Open, where the winner banks $4.3m from total prize money of $21m. This week’s tournament is the second richest, however, ahead of the US PGA Championship ($3.3m/$18.5m) and the Open Championship ($3.1m/$17m). The biggest prize money of all is actually handed out away from the majors. Rory McIlroy trousered $4.5m from a $25m pot for winning the Players Championship last month. The winner of the Tour Championship, the PGA Tour’s end-of-season finale, gets $15m – a quarter of the prize fund – although it is technically a culmination of three FedEx Cup Playoffs. Why has golf prize money increased? Prize funds at top golf tournaments have climbed steeply in the last decade, meaning players are earning bigger sums than ever before. More recently, the launch of LIV Golf, where every tournament offers $20m in prize money, has had an inflationary effect on purses across the game. The PGA Tour has been forced to respond by upping payouts at its signature events to $20m – the same as the Masters – in a bid to keep top players from defecting. In that context, the growth in rewards at the majors has been comparatively modest but only looks set to go one way.