PARIS, France — Dallas' own Scottie Scheffler is ranked No. 1 in the world, and he has the titles and paychecks to prove it. He's won about $27.6 million in earnings from the PGA Tour this year. Now, he adds an Olympic gold medal to his list of wins this year.
Scheffler clinched the gold medal after starting the final round of play on Sunday four shots back of the lead. But Scheffler rallied to finish with 19-under ahead of Great Britain's Tommy Fleetwood, who won silver, and Japan's Hideki Matsuyama, who claimed bronze.
Now, after winning gold in the men's golf tournament at the Paris Olympics, he'll be taking home another check along with his gold medal. Scheffler will earn $38,000 for winning gold in Paris, according to Golf.com. That's far less than the payout he's earned from winning any PGA Tour event this year, but the Olympics, similar to the Ryder Cup, are about more than the money for pro golfers, who rarely get the opportunity to represent their country.
The $38,000 figure is the standard bonus that American gold medal winners receive, including stars like Simone Biles. Silver medal winners get $23,000, while bronze medal winners get $15,000. And those numbers vary from country to country, and not every country awards bonuses to medal winners.
While $38,000 is certainly not nothing, it's safe to say that wasn't on Scheffler's mind down the stretch Sunday. For comparison, he earned $3.6 million for his win at the Masters in April. Sunday was all about the medal (just as the Masters was all about the green jacket, albeit with a bigger paycheck).
The 28-year-old Scheffler has had an eventful 2024, including that Masters win, the birth of his child and even some time spent in jail after he was arrested before the second round of the PGA Championship (in a case that was ultimately dropped).
Now, he'll add winning his first gold medal to that list of accomplishments in 2024.
The U.S. is the defending gold medal winner in men's golf. At the 2020 Tokyo games, American Xander Schauffele took home gold for his country. He entered the final round Sunday at the top of the leaderboard but fell out of contention.