Deane Beman’s Financial Foresight Paying Dividends for Today’s PGA Tour Pros

Denny McCarthy has amassed $22.95 million in career earnings on the PGA Tour.

Even more impressive considering McCarthy has yet to win since getting his Tour card in 2018.

Despite coming agonizingly close in a pair of playoff losses at the 2024 Valero Texas Open and 2023 Memorial Tournament, the 33-year-old has proven that consistency on the course can still lead to a financially fruitful career. McCarthy has made 72% of cuts (168/233) over the course of his Tour career and boasts 71 top-25 finishes in those 233 events (30.5%) to etch his name in the top-100 all-time Tour money earners.

Not only are golfers like McCarthy able to have profitable pro careers without winning, more importantly, they are able to further secure their financial futures by leveraging the PGA Tour’s advantageous retirement program.

“I think it’s very favorable,” said Wealthspire Managing Director Frank Marzano, who advises many Tour players. “Players who have tenure on the PGA Tour and make cuts tend to have—if it’s invested appropriately, paid attention to and maximized—nice balances that could be allocated towards their retirement when they’re ready to retire.”

Financial foresight

Former PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman introduced the Tour’s membership pension plan in 1983 that was developed with Victor Ganzi, then the Tour’s tax advisor, who would serve on the policy board from 1994-2022.

Despite the Tour still being in its infancy after breaking away from the PGA of America in December 1968, the pension plan laid the groundwork for a lucrative, incentive-laden retirement plan available to today’s Tour pro with more money in the game than ever.

While a traditional employer may encourage employees to add to their plans by offering a contribution match, the PGA Tour incentivizes players to play—and play well.

The cuts-made contribution plan rewards golfers for—you guessed it—qualifying for weekend rounds at Tour events. Members who play at least 15 approved events earn one credit for each of their first 15 cuts made and then two credits for each additional cut made.

At the end of the season, the Tour reviews how many players qualified for the plan then divvies up its $15 million of annual contributions to the plan accordingly. Last year, contributions for the roughly 170 players who qualified topped out at approximately $185,000 with an average of $88,000 as one credit was valued at just over $5,200.

These benefits are payable over a 20-25 year period after the age of 50 once the member starts playing fewer than 15 events across the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions.

A golfer’s success is further rewarded should they qualify for the 125-man FedExCup Playoffs. A portion of the bonus pool goes into player retirement accounts based on where they finish in the standings.

The top-5 each receive $1 million with this performance-based contribution scaling down to the 125th-ranked player who receives $100,000. The average contribution across the FedExCup plan is approximately $246,000 with the program’s total funding at just under $31 million for 2026.

Those benefits are payable over five years after the age of 45 once those players play less than 15 events a year.

It’s hard to project what an individual player can have in their account given various contributing factors including length of career, cuts-made, market returns, etc.

Golf Digest previously asked a large brokerage firm to model out an average Tour player’s retirement:

The player stayed on Tour for 10 years and made 10-12 cuts each year, which is the average. Each year $60,000 was contributed to the cuts-made plan and the rate of return was set at 7% with inflation at 3%. After 10 years of playing, this theoretical player had $754,674 in the account. With no further contributions, he would have $2.55 million when he began drawing on his retirement 25 years after that.

“If you look back on it today, it’s been incredible and so I’m so glad that (the pension plan) was put together by Commissioner Beman and Vic Ganzi,” said seven-time PGA Tour winner Peter Jacobsen, who was on the policy board in the early 1980s. “They had such great foresight to what this plan could become.”

The Tour’s retirement offerings have only become more valuable with the introduction of the PGA Tour Player Equity Program. In April 2024, the Tour awarded a total of $930 million in equity grants to 193 players in PGA Tour Enterprises, which controls the commercial businesses and rights for the PGA Tour and DP World Tour.

Backed by Strategic Sports Group (SSG), PGA Tour Enterprises has a valuation of $12 billion according to the Tour. The grants come with an eight-year vesting period where they will be worth 50% of their value after four years, 75% after six and the full amount at the end of eight years.

While the future value of those stakes in PGA Tour Enterprises and how they can be sold is still unknown, the Player Equity Program was the Tour’s response to the gaudy guaranteed payouts LIV Golf was offering when it first launched in 2021.

Future financials

Certainly a lot to unpack and understand for a golfer laser-focused on not only getting on the Tour, but keeping his card, and hopefully having success (while managing everything in between), the PGA Tour has a dedicated team that speaks regularly to members—especially rookies—regarding various programming offerings from its retirement plan and healthcare subsidies to Member Support Program.

The player support team will certainly be busy over the next year as the PGA Tour prepares to unveil its latest iteration featuring a two-tiered competitive structure with the Championship Series and Challenger Series debuting in 2028.

While the new schedule and structure was “built upon a foundation of meritocracy,” how will it impact existing Tour support programs? Will players on the Challenger Series who rely more on the cuts-made plan contributions still have the same amount of opportunities to earn the qualifying number of cuts as they would in the past structure and format?

A PGA Tour executive confirmed retirement plan incentives, health benefits and other member support programs are something they’re “evaluating as we speak.” With a goal of not taking a step back in terms of what’s currently offered, the exec said we’ll probably see “enhanced investment” in some of those areas as opposed to a decrease.

Confident the Tour will head into 2028 with a very clear idea of what those programs look like in the Tour’s next era, the executive said the details should be hammered out in the back half of 2027, if not sooner.

At the end of the day, the Tour’s goal is to attract, retain, support and promote the game’s biggest, brightest and best names in order to strengthen its product.

With golf more popular and mainstream than ever before, the PGA Tour is hardly resting on its laurels, regardless of LIV Golf’s future. 

“We want our guys to show up. We want them to play,” the Tour executive said. “So we’ve got some incentives out there to align which we think is important and the membership understands.

“Generally speaking, I think we’ve got a really healthy retirement program and benefits package that we provide to members outside of a significant amount of cash compensation and bonus compensation they’re earning.”