Nick Rodger
| Special for Golfweek
Have you ever wondered how your earnings compare to those of the world’s biggest superstars? Of course you haven’t.
It would be quite a preposterous exercise, wouldn’t it? Well, unless you – yes, you reading this – are an actual superstar and fancy checking in to see what vast sums your superstar pals have stuffed into their bank accounts recently.
Anyway, the reason I’m waffling on about earnings is that I got an email from a marketing firm, eagerly informing me about a new interactive calculator that, “allows Brits to compare their earnings to those of Rory McIlroy, Lionel Messi, Taylor Swift and others.”
It was one of the most ridiculous things I’d read for a while. Until, of course, I gave the introduction to this column a quick once-over before submitting it in the same kind of tentative way that someone would send in their own bankruptcy order.
Apparently, McIlroy’s net worth is estimated to be upwards of $185 million. Does yours compare favorably to that haul?
According to the calculations of the boffins behind this interactive thingamabob, it would take the average Brit 4,870 years to match Rory’s wealth.
“We can maybe negotiate a modest pay rise in the year 6895 then,” cackled my sports editor with miserly, hysterical relish as he counted out my wages in IOUs.
Away from the high-powered, cut-and-thrust of financial affairs at newspapers, there’s been a lot of money talk swilling around lately.
The other day, for instance, LIV Golf’s UK entity, which looks after the Saudi-backed breakaway league’s activities outside the U.S., reported losses of almost $500 million.
Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), which bankrolls the eye-wateringly lucrative series, was playing the Dunhill Links Championship last week and was captured on camera at a glitzy St. Andrews shindig joining in with a communal rendition of “Sweet Caroline.”
Perhaps he should have croaked out the words to another Neil Diamond favorite as he gave a sighing, reflective glance at the LIV UK accounts? “Money talks, but it don’t sing and dance and it don’t walk.”
For all the frightening amount of money getting plunged into the LIV venture, it continues to hemorrhage an almighty amount of it too.
Saying that, however, there’s no sign of LIV disappearing off into the night and it will continue to be part of the fractured professional landscape for the foreseeable future.
Can you believe the rebel circuit, which has caused such division and disruption, will be heading into its fifth season? Where does the time go?
One could say that too about documenting the career of Robert MacIntyre.
Back in 2012, a couple of colleagues and myself had our first encounter with a young lad from Oban, Scotland, during the Scottish Boys’ Championship at Murcar near Aberdeen.
On the basis that Bubba Watson had won the Masters a couple of days earlier, we all decided, in the grand traditions of tenuous sporting links, that we would keep the left-hander theme ticking along in the domestic under-18s showpiece as MacIntyre eased through one of his matchplay rounds.
After parking himself in the press hut, an environment so modest it made Robert the Bruce’s cave look like The Dorchester, a slightly sheepish MacIntyre confessed that he didn’t actually know who had won the green jacket at Augusta and was hoping to watch a re-run of the highlights when he got home. The golf writers scuppered his surprise.
It was a rather charming and chortling chapter broadly equivalent to that old episode of the Likely Lads in which Terry and Bob tried to avoid hearing the result of an England football game.
We probably didn’t think at the time that MacIntyre was our golfing likely lad. But look at him now?
His victory in the Dunhill Links Championship on Sunday, his fourth on the DP World Tour and a second on home turf after his Scottish Open success in 2024, inched him up to a career-high of eighth on the world rankings.
The only players ahead of him on the global pecking order are J.J. Spaun, Justin Thomas, Tommy Fleetwood, Xander Schauffele, Russell Henley, McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler. It’s pretty esteemed company.
Scheffler, of course, is so far out of reach as the world No. 1 at the moment, he may as well be perched on the outer rings of Saturn.
In his own terrific progression up the order, though, MacIntyre will keep the blinkers on and continue to do it his way.
That way will, no doubt, feature a few more colorful curses that will keep the TV commentators on their toes.
One such MacIntyre torrent, after he found some trouble in a fairway bunker, almost came with an amber warning. Even Storm Amy battened down her hatches.
But I digress. “Scottie is miles ahead of everyone else, but the biggest thing is running your own race,” said MacIntyre in the aftermath of his latest success which came just a week after team glory in the Ryder Cup.
“I’m doing alright just now in my race, and if I can just keep moving forward, then I don’t know how good I can be. I know one thing. I’ll try my best.”
MacIntyre’s journey of golfing discovery goes on. Those of us following it will continue to enjoy the ride.
Now, how much does he earn again?
