Rory McIlroy's DP World Tour Race to Dubai prize dwarfed by LIV Golf millions

13 November 2023 , 16:55

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Rory McIlroy won his fifth Race to Dubai title on Sunday (Image: (Photo by GLYN KIRK/AFP via Getty Images))

Rory McIlroy's £1.6 million Race to Dubai prize is a fraction of the season-long bonus handed out by the DP World Tour's great rivals LIV Golf.

McIlroy defended his Race to Dubai crown for the second time in his career on Sunday without even taking to the course. The Northern Irishman was set to contest for the year-long title at the DP World Tour Championship this week, but he can no longer be caught by the chasing pack.

The crowning was confirmed following the completion of the Nedbank Golf Challenge, with none of the four-time major champion's closest competitors earning enough points in South Africa to take the race to the final week of the season.

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The win is the fifth time McIlroy has been crowned the Wentworth-based circuit's top player, and it came with a nice bonus of £1.6 million ($2m) too. The season-long bonus takes the world No. 3's on-course earnings for the year to £18.2 million, but his DP World Tour figure is dwarfed by LIV's top prize.

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The breakaway league's own 2023 Order of Merit was won by American Talor Gooch, as he fended off the likes of Brooks Koepka and Cam Smith to land an eye-watering £14.7 million ($18m) prize. Gooch impressed throughout the year, winning on three occasions, and his bonus last month made him pro golf's top earner for 2023.

Rory McIlroy collected a £1.6 million bonus for his Race to Dubai win (Getty Images)

In total, Gooch raked in a remarkable £30.6 million ($37.5m) throughout 2023 in a year to remember for the American. The difference in prize money will not concern McIlroy too much, with the 2014 Open champion one of golf's - and sport's - wealthiest athletes.

Amid LIV Golf's rapid rise over the past 17 months, McIlroy has emerged as one of its biggest critics, after the Saudi-backed league went toe-to-toe with the PGA Tour. In recent months, the Northern Irishman has taken a more reserved approach when it comes to LIV in the wake of a potential merger forming between the rival tours.

Earlier this month though, the 34-year-old appeared to reignite the feud when claiming the breakaway league was in 'no man's land'. McIlroy made the jibe whilst discussing his new venture with Tiger Woods, with the pair set to launch an innovative golf league named 'TGL'.

24 PGA Tour players will compete across six teams on the stadium-based circuit, and in recent months the league has drawn strong comparisons to its LIV rivals. Rubbishing the similarities, McIlroy said: "I think [TGL] is meant to be complimentary [to professional golf], this is not meant to be disrespectful in any way.

"Whenever Mike [McCarley] brought this idea to Tiger and I, one of the first things we said is 'if we are going to do this we are going to have to partner with the PGA Tour in some way and make this complimentary'. That was the first thing. This was not adversarial at all, it was 'how can we be added into the entire system'...

"I don't want to sit here and talk about LIV but you could make the argument that they haven't innovated enough from what traditional golf is, or they have innovated too much that they not traditional golf. They are sort of caught in no-man's land, whereas this is so far removed from what we know golf to be."

Joshua Lees