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Enter the purse and how many places pay. Every amount is rounded to the nearest $5 so you can hand it out in cash, and the rounding difference is shown rather than hidden.
There is no governing rule for how prize money is divided — it is a judgement call. What organizers converge on is a curve weighted toward the winner but not so steep that finishing 4th is worth nothing. The three options above cover the usual range:
A common guideline is one paid place for every three to five entries. A 40-player field paying 8 to 13 spots across its flights feels right to most golfers. Pay too few and everyone outside the top group has nothing to play for by the turn; pay too many and the prizes are too small to be worth winning. If you flight the field, each flight gets its own places — which is usually a better use of the same money than deepening one overall list.
Exact percentages produce amounts like $347.82. Nobody wants to count that out at a prize table, so every place here is rounded to the nearest $5. Rounding means the total will usually land a few dollars either side of the purse, which is why the difference is shown rather than quietly absorbed. Fix it by nudging first or last place. A payout total above what you collected is the one to take seriously — that gap comes out of someone's pocket, usually the organizer's.
There is no official rule, but the common convention is to pay roughly the top third of the field and weight it toward the winner without making the lower places insulting. A standard curve for three places lands near 50/30/20; for five places, near 35/25/18/13/9. What matters more than the exact numbers is that the total paid out equals the total collected.
A common guideline is one paid place for every three to five entries, so a 40-player field pays 8 to 13 spots across its flights. Paying too few places makes the event feel like a lottery for everyone outside the top group; paying too many leaves prizes too small to care about.
Yes. Prizes handed out in cash are far easier to manage in $5 increments, and golfers read $85 as a prize while $83.47 reads as a spreadsheet. This calculator rounds every place to the nearest $5 and shows you the rounding difference so you can see exactly what it costs.
Rounding to $5 means the total will usually land a few dollars either side of the purse. Adjust the first or last place by the difference. A purse that pays out more than it collected is the one case to take seriously — that gap comes out of the organizer's pocket.
The usual method is to pool the prizes for the tied places and split them equally. Two players tied for 2nd pool the 2nd and 3rd place money and take half each, and the next finisher gets 4th place money. The alternative is a countback on the back nine, back six and back three — standard for a physical trophy that cannot be split.
Running the whole event, not just the math?
Tourlyx does this calculation for every team automatically, then handles pairings, live scoring, skins and the final payout.