Valspar Championship 2018 purse: Winner’s payout is $1.2 million in prize money

The Valspar Championship is having a moment. This Tampa tourney used to be a lower-tier event, a sleepy forgotten stop on the Florida swing sandwiched between a heavywight WGC at historic Doral and Arnold Palmer’s powerhouse at Bay Hill.

But in recent years, the Valspar Championship, as it’s now known after several years of a revolving door of title sposors, has busted its ass to improve and attract a deeper field. They give out quality exemptions to up-and-coming talents. They prep the course in a way the pros love, taking advantage of an Innisbrook Copperhead course that has some unique traits on a PGA Tour rota that can get monotonous.

The field has improved because of hard work and a great approach, but even in their wildest dreams, the tourney organizers could not have envisioned this. Tiger Woods has made the Valspar Championship the center of the sports world, and on Selection Sunday no less. We’re not supposed to care this much about this event but Woods is in contention late Sunday. A win, after everything that’s gone down over the past five years, would be one of the great sports stories of all time. It doesn’t matter that it’s not a major.

It’s safe to say this is the biggest boost the Valspar will ever get. The tourney could take on a new life after this year. It’s no longer just some extra stop on the Florida swing, but an opportunity for a lot of big names to get in a pre-Masters start. It’s also another opportunity to make some nice cash. The Valspar purse is competitive with a total $6.5 million ready to be handed out. Many purses are now over $7 million, and this week doesn’t compare with last week’s astronomical $10 million WGC purse, but that’s a solid total and about average on the PGA Tour.

The winner will get the usual $1 million-plus payout, while the top 17 should all be in six figures. With $120,691,305 in on-course earnings, the most all-time, and much, much more in off-course earnings, Woods is not exactly playing for the winner’s check at this point. The extra million won’t hurt, but he’s obviously going for something else on Sunday afternoon. The same can be said for pretty much every player near the top of the leaderboard, which also features Justin Rose, Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia, and Paul Casey.

Here’s your full payout table — we’ll update this as results go final. Some totals will obviously be impacted by ties.

Update: Here’s your final payout total. Woods came up one shot short and settled for a big six-figure payout, as opposed to the $1 million prize.