Chevron Championship, LPGAs first major, grows purse by $2.7 million

The first major of the year in women’s golf is getting a significant boost in prize money, with this weekend’s Chevron Championship increasing its total purse to $7.9 million, up from $5.2 million last year.

The elevated purse continues a trend of record payouts in the sport, particularly at the five major championships. This season’s majors are on track to award $45.4 million, an increase of 97 percent since 2021, when the purses totaled $23 million. That remains short of the prize pool in men’s majors; the Masters, which has a long-standing lucrative TV rights deal, had a total purse of $20 million this month.

The LPGA Tour’s season-long combined prize money now stands at $123.25 million, an increase of nearly 80 percent in five years.

“This is about the best players in the world coming together to play for something that really matters, so that’s first and foremost,” LPGA Tour Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan said Tuesday during a news conference at The Club at Carlton Woods in The Woodlands, Tex., site of the Chevron Championship. “But I think them playing for a purse that is commensurate with their world-class talent, which I say all the time is really important. I think it’s a symbol of how Chevron views the value of our athletes and of the LPGA. It’s how the world views the talent of our athletes, and so it’s practical because obviously playing for more money when you’re the best in the world is important.”

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The Chevron Championship bump comes a little more than two months after the U.S. Golf Association announced the total purse for the U.S. Women’s Open at Lancaster Country Club in Pennsylvania would grow to $12 million, an increase of $1 million from last season’s event, which was contested for the first time at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

This week’s Chevron winner will receive $1.2 million, up from last year’s first-place check of $780,000 that went to Lilia Vu, the No. 2 player in the world who outlasted fellow American Angel Yin with a birdie on the first playoff hole.

Players who miss the cut at the Chevron Championship also are getting a raise to help cover costs for the week. Those outside the cutline are to receive $10,000, the largest such stipend on the LPGA Tour and double that of last year’s Chevron Championship. That’s the same amount received by men who missed the cut at the 2023 U.S. Open.

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“It’s just a real privilege for us to announce the increases in prize money and support for the tour and the increase in the amount of time that our current contract will run,” said Chevron CEO Mike Wirth, whose company will maintain title sponsor status through 2029. “We’re thrilled with everything about this event. Mollie and I just spent all morning meeting with a whole host of people from the sports world, the golf world and the business world, talking about what more can be done to help grow the LPGA and capitalize on this great moment when people are so focused on women’s sports.”

In addition to Vu seeking to win the Chevron for a second straight year, the most compelling storyline heading into this week is world No. 1 Nelly Korda aiming for a fifth consecutive win. She would become just the second American to win five straight starts, joining Nancy Lopez in 1978. The only other player to win five in a row is Sweden’s Annika Sorenstam in 2004 and 2005.

The Chevron Championship last year moved to the Jack Nicklaus-designed layout outside Houston after originally being held in Rancho Mirage, Calif., where it went through a handful of iterations, including the Nabisco Dinah Shore, the Kraft Nabisco Championship and the ANA Inspiration.

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The course has undergone renovations since last year’s tournament, when Vu and Yin finished at 10-under-par 278 through 72 holes. Getting a feel for the speed and receptiveness of the updated greens has been a priority, players said.

“It’s funny — without knowing exactly what they did, you would probably go out there and be like, ‘It really doesn’t look that different,’ ” said Stacy Lewis, the U.S. Solheim Cup captain and winner of the event in 2011. “It’s very subtle things. On 18 here, that wall of the water being moved closer to the edge so that bank is now a few yards from the edge of the green. I think it’s probably half now of what it was, so the water becomes more in play. Brought some bunkering in off tees to make some tee shots a little bit more challenging. The biggest challenge this year is the firmness, and that’s just new greens. Everybody is going to have to adjust.”

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