The 88th Masters is here.
Golf royalty including Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm will take to the course at the iconic Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia this week for the first major championship of the season and arguably the most prestigious.
The stacked field are all competing for the coveted green jacket that has become synonymous with the legendary event.
Winners of the illustrious tournament are guaranteed a monster payday – but so too are their trusted caddies, who can earn an eye-popping six-figure sum for just four days’ work.
How much do caddies make at the 2024 Masters?
The average weekly wage of a PGA Tour caddie is between $1,500-$4,000.
That sum is largely determined by how experienced they are and who they’re caddying for.
“I think $2,000 (£1594~) a week is pretty average, but everything is worked out between you and the player,” Brennan Little, a caddie of over 25 years, told Golf Monthly in 2022.
“After a few years you’ll get a raise. Or you’ll get bonuses at the end of the year. It just varies by the player.”
However, being a Masters caddie is expensive business as they have to cover all of their own expenses – including airfare, hotels, rental car, and food.
But caddies can make that back and more by negotiating a deal with golfers to be paid a percentage of their winnings after the tournament ends.
This isn’t written in stone and is up to the individual caddie to negotiate with the player.
But the general rule is that they receive 10 percent of the prize money if their player wins The Masters, 7 percent for a top-10 finish and five percent for everything else.
The total purse for last year’s tournament was $18 million – $3 million more than 2022.
Winner Jon Rahm took home $3.24 million in prize money, meaning his caddie, Adam Hayes, will have earned around $340,000 for those four days.
The winnings for the 2024 champion are expected to be similar, if not more, meaning this year’s winning caddie is in line for a major bonus.
The world’s best golfers are famously multi-millionaires, especially with LIV Golf dishing out staggeringly lucrative contracts in recent years.
But top caddies can also be multi-millionaires, like Scottie Scheffler’s caddie Ted Scott, who is thought to have made over $1 million in 2023 largely thanks to the world No.1’s 2022 Masters win.
Meanwhile, Steve Williams, Tiger Woods’ longtime caddie, is believed to have made more than $12 million (£9,569,040) working alongside the 15-time major champion between 1999 and 2011.
What do Masters caddies actually do?
Caddies’ earnings may seem inflated but many of them are former pros – plus they have an incredibly important job to do.
Despite popular belief, caddies aren’t just there to hand golf clubs over to the players.
In many ways they are a player’s confidante and someone they have built up personal relationships with away from the course.
Caddies often act as a player’s sounding board and someone they are in constant conversation with in between holes and shots during tournament play.
They advise players on which club to use, swing technique, how to approach each shot, and have in-depth information about the course and each hole, such as the distances to the greens.
A six-figure paycheck may seem like a lot for four days’ work but caddies certainly earn their keep and have put in years of work to get to that level.
You can keep up with the action at The Masters live on talkSPORT, with Sean O’Brien and Gabbie Partington providing regular updates throughout each day.
To tune in to talkSPORT or talkSPORT 2 through the website, click HERE for the live stream. You can also listen via the talkSPORT app, on DAB digital radio, through your smart speaker and on 1089 or 1053 AM.
News Summary:
- How much do caddies make at the 2024 Masters? Eye-popping payday for four days’ work at Augusta revealed
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