Eye-Popping Players First Prize Impossible to Ignore as Final Round Nears

For some players starting the final two rounds inside the top 10, the $3.6 million winner's check would be larger than their entire career earnings.

With the cut in the rearview mirror, the next focus is on the money.

With a purse of $20 million, the largest in PGA Tour history, attention turns to the winner’s share of $3.6 million and other players in the top 10 that statistically have the best chance to get a large deposit in their bank accounts on Tuesday morning.

Since 1995, when Lee Janzen won by one to defeat Bernhard Langer, only six players have come from outside the top 10 after 36 holes to win The Players Championship.

That makes a whopping 77% inside the top 10 at the halfway point over the last 27 years and 29 of 39 over the history of The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass.

Last year’s champion Justin Thomas was T22 after Friday’s second round and went on to win, joining South Korea’s Si Woo Kim in 2017 (T16) and K.J. Choi 2011 (T11), Australia's Tim Clark 2010 (T23), and Americans Justin Leonard 1998 (T13) and Fred Couples 1996 (T11).

Looking at the halfway leaderboard, the most anyone has won in a single event was when Abraham Ancer took home $1.82 million after winning the WGC-FedEx St. Jude last year.

In the case of Taylor Pendrith, his largest check came in the Bermuda Championship pocketing just $251,063.

Pendrith, Harold Varner III, Erik Van Rooyen and Anirban Lahiri have never won more than $800,000 in any event on the PGA Tour and this win would exceed that by $2.8 million.

In the case of Pendrith and Van Rooyen, neither has equaled the winner’s $3.6 million check over their entire careers, with Van Rooyen at $3,318,143 and Pendrith at just $911,360 in earnings.

The discussion of money has not come up yet with any of the top 10, though in the back of their minds it must be there, in some cases it likely a larger thought than others.

For someone like Pendrith, who has toiled on lesser tours, the money could be a game changer.

Playing in only 23 events on the PGA Tour since an appearance at the 2014 RBC Canadian Open as an amateur, where he finished at T43, Pendrith has had his best season on the PGA Tour this year earning $639,401. Most of that came from his only career top 10, a T5 in October at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship.

“Similar game plan, just I've been hitting a lot of drivers and been driving it really well,” Pendrith said of his game plan for the next 36 holes. “Hopefully just keep doing that and make some more putts. I think the wind is supposed to be similar this afternoon, might die down towards the end. It'll be tricky again, but just kind of plug away and hit a lot of greens and hopefully make a few.”