Dustin Johnson seals $35m year with LIV Golf team event victory at Trump course
CNN
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Dustin Johnson took his LIV Golf earnings for the season past the $35 million mark with victory in the series’ final event of the year in Miami on Sunday.
Having already claimed an $18m winners’ bonus for clinching the individual championship in Jeddah earlier this month, the American captained the 4Aces to the team title at Trump National Doral to secure his four-man group the $16m team prize.
Playing alongside Patrick Reed, Talor Gooch, and Pat Perez, the team shot a collective 7-under 281 to take a one-shot victory over Open champion Cameron Smith’s Team Punch, who finished runner-up in the 12-team competition that boasted a $50m prize pot.
Johnson’s $4m cut of the team competition winnings lifts his earnings from the inaugural series to $35,637,767, according to The Associated Press.
It marks a mammoth spike in earnings for Johnson who, in just eight LIV Golf events, has matched almost half a career’s total winnings on the PGA Tour. Across 16 seasons and 307 events on the sport’s flagship tour, the two-time major winner amassed almost $75 million in prize money.
The 38-year-old’s previous most profitable season had come in 2015-16, where three victories – including the US Open – over 22 PGA Tour events secured him $9.37 million in earnings. The American played 12 events on the Tour last season, with a six-placed finish at The Open the best of his four major outings.
“It’s pretty good,” Johnson told reporters when asked to summarize his year.
“I feel like it should have been a lot better, but I’m pretty happy with what ended up happening, winning the team championship.
“You add up the numbers and it was great, I played good [but] … I didn’t play my best, it could always be better, but that’s golf.”
Johnson’s compatriot Peter Uihlein, who has never won on the PGA Tour, collected just over $12.5m during the series to double his decade-long pro career earnings, while teammate Perez took his series earnings over $8m with victory in Miami, almost double the roughly $4.3m the 46-year-old earned in his most profitable season on the PGA Tour in 2017.
“All the push-back, all the negative comments, everything we’ve gotten – at this point I really don’t care. I’m paid, I don’t give a damn,” Perez said.
“My team played unbelievable this year … To have these guys and their caddies and families and coaches and everybody, it’s just one big family now.
“I just couldn’t be any happier. It’s unbelievable.”
The LIV Golf series is set to expand to 14 events next season, paving the way for even larger payouts, with six-time major winner Phil Mickelson insisting that the tour is “not going away.”
