Orlando, Florida – Tiger Woods raised the phrase “moving the needle” to a different level on Wednesday when the PGA Tour unveiled the winners of the Player Impact Program (PIP), which the tour first introduced in 2021.
Although he has not played in an official Masters 2020 tournament, Woods has been declared the winner of the PIP and will receive $ 8 million for it. Phil Mickelson, who recently took to Twitter to declare himself the winner of the PIPactually finished second and collected $ 6 million.
In December, Mickelson announced that he had won a PIP, tweeting, “I’d like to thank all the crazy (and real supporters) for helping me win a PIP!”
After the results were revealed on Wednesday, Woods took to Twitter, re-tweeting Mickelson with the words: “Oops.”
The admission program, which awarded $ 40 million to the top 10 graduates, was measured from January 1 to December 31, 2021, and the end result was calculated based on year-end data.
The winners used five criteria to determine the winner – Nielsen ratings, Google searches, MVP index, Meltwater Mentions and Q-Rating, based on the attractiveness and popularity of the player on social media.
The top 10 players received bonuses from the $ 40 million fund, which grows to $ 50 million in 2022. Woods and Mickelson were followed by Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spy, Bryson DeChambo and Justin Thomas, each receiving $ 3.5 million and then and Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, world number one John Ram and Buba Watson, each of whom won $ 3 million.
“Look at the 10 boys who are there, and these are the 10 boys who have been at the top of the game or have been at the top of the game for a long time,” McIlroy said Wednesday. “It’s certainly not something I check every week to see where I am, but I think it went the way most of us expected.
Patrick Cantlay, who is No. 3 in the world and not in the field of Arnold Palmer’s invitation this week, recently condemned the PIP program, saying it should give more weight to players’ results.
“I think I’m from the old school in terms of wanting the money to be allocated to the game, and I don’t think the PIP is doing that,” Cantlay told Genesis Invitational two weeks ago. “This may be the first deviation the tour has from rewarding a good game to rewarding a social media presence or popularity, so I don’t like this departure.”
Victor Howland, who does not have a Twitter account, said on Wednesday: “Obviously it would be nice to do a PIP, but at the same time I will not try to try to do that. I spend too much time on my phone, just answering messages. I see him more as a distraction than what he does to help me. My main focus is just to play better golf and that takes care of most things. ”