“Hoping That LIV Buys the Champions Tour”: Chris DiMarco Reveals Boldly While Talking Big Money in Pro Golf World

The last few years have seen tremendous changes in the golf world. With LIV Golf’s induction into the picture, the most affected component is money. As the PIF-backed giant continues to invest more money and skyrocket its prize purse, the PGA Tour is also trying to do its best to fix its own shortcomings.

However, as the PGA Tour continues to exponentially grow its purses, the same is not true of its seniors’ tour, the PGA Tour Champions. In light of the same, Chris DiMarco recently shared his enlightening take on LIV Golf. So what does the legend have to say?

Chris DiMarco opens up about his stance on LIV Golf

DiMarco realizes that “things are changing a lot in the game of golf right now.” The 55-year-old is one of the few people who is very optimistic about LIV Golf and the choices made by the defectors. At the GOLF’s Subpar podcast, he even joked about hoping the Champions Tour gets inducted in the multi-billion dollar giant’s camp.

The New York resident even compared the prize purses of the recently-held PLAYERS Championship with the Hoag Classic and highlighted how there are marginal differences between the two. While the former had a prize purse of $25 million, the latter just had $2 million to award its players.

“Well, we’re kind of hoping that LIV buys the Champions Tour. Let’s play for a little real money out here. I mean, this is kind of a joke when we’re averaging 2 million. There were like seven guys last week from TPC (the PLAYERS, where the purse was $25 million) that made more money than our purse (the Champions Tour Event last week, Hoag Classic had a total of $2 million purse).”

In fact, DiMarco even highlighted his support for players who chose to move to LIV Golf simply because it is more profitable and secure. He also agreed that if LIV Golf existed a decade or two ago, when he was at the peak of his career, he would have made a similar choice. But is the PGA Tour really so different in its prize money allocation to its seniors? What do the stats tell us?

Read More: $19M Pool, Global Venues: Legends Tour Hits a Massive Jackpot With Its 2024 Schedule

PGA Tour’s treatment of the Champions Tour

The talented senior American golf pro is correct in his assessment of the relatively stagnant prize purses of the Champions Tour. This season, the prize purse will be capped at $3.5 million in May at the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship. Whereas, the lowest purse will be seen at the 2025 PGA TOUR Champions Qualifying Tournament-Final Stage (the total prize purse accounting for up to $200,000).

The average prize purse for this season of the Champions Tour is predicted to be around $2 million. When put in comparison with the official schedule of the PGA Tour, the results are shocking. The highest that the Tour has awarded its players is $25 million at the PLAYERS Championship, whereas the lowest it plans to go this season is $4 million at a couple of its events (which is still higher than the biggest prize purse of the Seniors subset of the Tour.

Read More: Who Was Malcolm Gregson? Exploring the Life of the European Legend