Rising Tide Lifts LPGA’s 2023 Prize Fund To $101 Million

Next year the LPGA is set to mint more seven-figure earners than in any prior season. In 2021 the top 15 women golfers earned over one million in on-course earnings and in 2022 with the CME Group Tour Championship still underway, there are already 22 women who’ve reached that seven-figure level.

Heading into weekend play at Tiburon Golf Club, Lydia Ko is out front in a field of 60 players vying for a tour record $2 million winner’s take, with a $550,000 payout for second place and a $340,000 check for finishing third. The rising tide in women’s golf will continue in 2023. The LPGA just dropped next year’s 33 tournament schedule and there is a record nine figure prize fund with players competing for a whopping $101.4 million prize pool, that’s up from $93.5 million in total purse money this past season.

“To be over $100 million, I think it’s just a milestone in itself and just a testament to how well our commissioner and our sponsors have stepped up to put up that money,” Minjee Lee, who sits atop the LPGA Tour’s 2022 money list, says.

“I think it just closes a little bit of the gap between the men’s and women’s tour. I know we’ve always been saying it so much, but we’ve only been going from strength to strength, and I think it’s only going to keep going up from here,” she adds.

Just as sanguine is LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan who feels the elevated purses and record prize money coupled with over 500 hours of broadcast television coverage puts the league in a unique spot in the pantheon of women’s sports.

“All those things combine to make the LPGA the leading women’s professional sports property in the world. The LPGA Tour has never had better or more committed partners who see the commercial value in investing in women’s sports and who understand how their partnerships elevate women and girls on and off the golf course. As the home to the world’s best female golfers, the LPGA provides a platform to inspire young girls and women to dream big,” Samaan says.

The 2023 schedule, which will see the tour touch down in 11 states and 12 countries, gets swinging at Orlando’s Lake Nona on Jan 19^th with the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions teeing up the season. Instead of an extended Sunshine State stay, there will then be a month break before the tour returns with an Asian swing through Thailand, Singapore and China.

The first major of the year, leaps from late March to April 20-23 with the Chevron Championships, held at the Club at Carlton Woods in Woodlands, Texas for the first time. The remaining four majors will be contested in the summer over and eight week stretch starting with the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship on June 22-25 and finishing with the AIG Women’s Open August 10-13.

It’s a Solheim Cup year with the biennial team competition pitting the USA against Europe squaring off on the fine fairways of Finca Cortesín golf club on Spain’s Costa Del Sol September 22-24, a week ahead of the Ryder Cup in Rome.

Another team competition, the Hanwha Lifeplus International Crown, is back on the slate following a four-year absence. Reigning champ South Korea hopes to defend its title when the eight-country showdown hits San Francisco’s TPC Harding Park in May.