By besting a crowded field at Aronimink Golf Club, Aaron Rai won his first major championship, which came with a very big payday for the English golfer.
After making a nearly 70-foot birdie putt on the 17th green, Rai was able to coast to victory and enjoy the walk up the 18th fairway on his way to the championship. This year’s event had a purse of $20.5 million, a record amount for a PGA Championship. Rai’s winning cut of that purse was $3.69 million, besting last year’s $3.42 million that winner Scottie Scheffler took home at Quail Hollow.
While Rai’s walk up the 18th hole was one without stress, 54-hole leader Alex Smalley’s final hole was very consequential. Smalley rolled in a 20-foot birdie putt to secure a tie for second with two-time major champion Jon Rahm. By making that putt, Smalley banked $1.804 million, $961,000 more than what he would have made for a third place tie, if Smalley would have missed the birdie putt. Smalley has earned about $12 million for his career, so the birdie putt he holed on the final hole was equal to about 7.7% of his career earnings. While Alex Smalley would have loved to have been able to hoist the Wanamaker Trophy on Sunday, this was quite a consolation prize.
Below is the full list of 2026 championship payouts by order of finish.
2026 PGA Championship payouts
1. Aaron Rai — $3.69 million
T2. Jon Rahm, Alex Smalley $1.804 million
T4. Justin Thomas, Ludvig Åberg, Matti Schmid — $843,867
T7. Cam Smith, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele — $637,050
T10. Kurt Kitayama, Chris Gotterup, Justin Rose, Patrick Reed — $496,708
T14. Matt Fitzpatrick, Scottie Scheffler, Max Greyserman, Ben Griffin — $364,763
T18. Jordan Spieth, Stephan Jaeger, Padraig Harrington, David Puig, Harris English, Min Woo Lee, Joaquin Niemann, Maverick McNealy — $221,832
T26. Nick Taylor, Alex Noren, Cameron Young, Andrew Novak, Daniel Hillier, Tom Hoge, Sam Burns, Hideki Matsuyama, Bud Cauley — $125,523
T35. Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Patrick Cantlay, Ryo Hisatsune, Daniel Berger, Ryan Fox, Haotong Li, Aldrich Potgieter, Si Woo Kim, Martin Kaymer — $78,806
T44. Matt Wallace, Shane Lowry, Jhonattan Vegas, Denny McCarthy, Chandler Blanchet, Taylor Pendrith, Dustin Johnson, Nicolai Højgaard, Michael Kim, Kristoffer Reitan, Chris Kirk — $50,291
T55. Collin Morikawa, Corey Conners, Andrew Putnam, Brooks Koepka, Mikael Lindberg — $34,186
T60. Sami Valimaki, Sahith Theegala, Rico Hoey, Rickie Fowler, Brian Harman — $29,218
T65. Casey Jarvis, Jason Day, Rasmus Højgaard, Keith Mitchell, Sam Stevens — $26,900
T70. Luke Donald, Ryan Gerard, John Parry, William Mouw, Kazuki Higa — $25,070
T75. Elvis Smylie, Rasmis Neergaard-Petersen, Alex Fitzpatrick, Daniel Brown — $24,192.50
79. John Keefer — $23,970
80. Ben Kern — $23,930
81. Michael Brennan — $23,910
82. Brian Campbell — $23,900
Players missing the cut – $4,300
Mike is a founding member of Break80 Golf and a contributing golf and sports writer for Forbes with PGA Tour and LIV Golf media credentials. He can be reached at break80podcast@gmail.com for inquiries or story leads.
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