Being a professional golfer can be a very lucrative career. Many golfers—including top names like Jon Rahm—jumped to LIV Golf and its exorbitant earnings. More recently, we just saw Scottie Scheffler have one of the best seasons in PGA Tour history.
It turns out that being a caddie can be incredibly lucrative, too. Just look at Ted Scott, Scheffler’s caddie.
Caddies do more than carry clubs around and keep score for players. They also offer advice about the best approaches to take on a given hole, how to recover from certain lies, and considerations on weather or course conditions that might impact the normal strategy.
Ted Scott (L) with Scottie Scheffler. (Keyur Khamar/PGA TOUR via Getty Images)
Because of their importance, most golfers have a 10/7/5 split with their caddies. That means caddies receive 10% of the player’s total earnings if the golfer wins the tournament. The caddie gets 7% for a top-ten finish and 5% for every other finish.
Assuming Scott and Scheffler have that agreement, the caddy has made a whopping $5,238,500 this year.
Earning over $5 million without swinging a golf club once is wildly impressive. And if Scott were a golfer, he’d sit at 20th on the earnings list among all PGA Tour players. Only 114 golfers even hit $1 million in earnings this season.
Of course, Scott has benefitted from the career year Scheffler has had. The No. 1 ranked golfer in the world won eight events and seven titles this season, often cruising to easy victories. Winning at East Lake last weekend gave Scheffler the FedEx Cup and an extra $25 million.
This is a great lesson for anyone out there. If you have any interest in golf but aren’t particularly skilled at swinging a club, try networking with other golfers and earning a spot as a caddie on a course.
Who knows? If you meet the right person who becomes incredibly successful, your decision just might turn into millions of dollars.