Ryo Ishikawa: The Second Billion Dollar Golfer?

Though the PGA Tour’s purses would have continued to climb exponentially without Woods

Purses are a function of how many people see the sponsors advertising. Without Woods, the growth in sponsorship contributions would never have increased exponentially, to the point that the 90th player on the money list is a millionaire.

Here’s the figures from a piece I did a little while back:

Total Tour purses have skyrocketed since 1974, when the total money doled out was just above $8 million. For 1998, it was $96 million. In ’09, that tally was $275 million. In 24 years, the total purse on the PGA Tour increased by a factor of twelve. In the twelve years since, by a factor of almost three.

http://www.waggleroom.com/2010/3/24/1388482/tiger-img-the-pga-tour-the-battle

I agree with the overstatedness of Tiger’s impact on purses. While we all agree he’s had an impact, every major sport has experienced the same type of inflation. In the past 15 years, companies have seen huge ROIs on their sponsorships of athletes and sporting events. Tiger just happened to be the top dog in golf during this time. There’s more $$s in the system, fellas and the players are just happily lapping it up. Are Pujols and A-Rod the reason that the average baseball salary has gone from $44K in 1974 to $3.3 million in 2010? Nope. Capitalism is about investing money in order to make money and avertising budgets have gone through the roof. It’s been easy for marketing execs to justify their media buys and huge spending (pumping money into the system) because of how many consumers they can reach in this information age. Perhaps we’re due for a price correction as sponsors question their ROI for players and tournaments alike. Good talk.

…can’t we just start at a billion yen before starting this kind of nonsense ?

Ishikawa has how many wins on the PGA Tour ? None. How many wins on the European Tour ? None. He has played in 4 majors and missed the cut in 3 of them with a T56 in last year’s PGA.

Only Tiger-centrists have ever said that he “saved” the PGA Tour. The Tour was doing just fine. Woods triggered huge interest in himself and the game (which has since, naturally, dropped to a more normal level for the game), and ran tournament purses and prices to amazing levels.

This kind of thing may happen in Japan, but not on the PGA Tour or European Tour.

Once again – RB – can’t we let the guy get a taste of winning on a big stage before proclaiming him to be the next “billion dollar man” ? (by the way – we don’t have a FIRST billion dollar man – why do these nits always forget that Uncle Sam takes a monstrous bite out of everything ?)

We don’t know that Ishikawa will ever win on the US or Euro tours, as unlikely as it seems that he won’t – but throughout the history of the tour there have always been “the next…” in line. We’ve had to watch “The Next Nicklaus” fade time and again. It’s just a matter of time before “The Next Tiger” starts getting talked about…and we’ll watch a bunch of them fade. Davis Love III was supposed to be a world beater…but we found out that he didn’t have the killer instinct to be a dominant player.

Let the kid breath and grow up before starting this crap. Doesn’t anybody remember their stomach wretching every time Michelle Wie’s name was mentioned because of this same kind of thing ?

he will leave Japan. He has to compete with world players, unlike Ozaki , who just played there for a living. He knows this and won’t stay long enough for a billion or whatever.

here and that means multiple majors

Not just 1-2