Mito Pereira and the most expensive 12 minutes in golf history
Golf has had its share of final hole meltdowns, but as the Chilean is now discovering, it's particularly costly to do it in the cash-swelled environment of 2022.
Call it ambition, or inflation, or the upward pressure imposed by Saudi Arabian money, but the PGA Championship of America — long renowned for having the biggest trophy in sport — now has the biggest prize fund in Major golf too.
Ahead of the 2022 edition, which finished with drama on the 72nd hole at Southern Hills outside Tulsa, Oklahoma on Sunday, the PGA announced a major hike in its Major purse: up $3 million year on year to a total of $15 million, with the winner set to pocket $2.7 million of that.
All of which is to say that Mito Pereira, the unheralded Chilean who finished tied for 3rd when all the dust had settled, saw a tidy reward for his weekend’s work: $870,000.
To put this individual haul — for a player ranked 100th in the world going into the weekend, and without a win outside of the secondary Korn Ferry Tour — in some perspective, let’s take a look, for example, at the 2022 season-to-date earnings of the last three winners on the world’s secondmost tour, the formerly highly-touted but soon-to-be-seriously-threatened European DP World Tour.
Sam Horsfield, Thorbjorn Olesen and Adri Arnaus — two of whom made the cut at the PGA in Oklahoma — have all raked in significantly less this year (in five, six and eight paydays respectively) than the money paid out for Pereira’s T3 finish in Tulsa.
Arnaus, for example, in addition to his win at the Catalunya Championship in Barcelona a few weeks back, has three other Top 10 finishes on the European DP World Tour, and grabbed his best ever Major finish with T30th in Tulsa, only eight shots back. And still his total earnings for 2022 to date don’t reach what Pereira netted for his T3.
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So, most things considered, when you take the time for a little perspective, the biggest payday of Mito Pereira’s career was a pretty big deal for Chile’s rising star.
But.
But. But.
Human nature dictates that perspective is never an easy thing to come by. And when you have the pinnacle of your life’s work within your grasp, and then see it disappear through your fingers like sand, perspective must be almost impossible to find.
And it might take Mito and his crew a little time to get over just what happened in 12 crazy minutes last Sunday.
At approximately 3.33pm, the 27-year-old from Santiago placed his teed in the ground on the 72nd hole, holding a one-stroke lead over Justin Thomas and Will Zalatoris.
What happened next may well haunt him forever.
Even the casual Sunday afternoon sofa-surfing sports fan, who might not tell a stinger from a snap hook, could have seen something was off when Pereira swung his driver. Nothing about it seemed right.
The ball dropped in the drink, way on the right side of the 18th fairway.
Ghosts of Carnoustie
Immediately the Jean van de Velde pics starting bouncing around golf twitter, recalling the famous 72nd at the 1999 Open at Carnoustie, when the Frenchman saw a three-shot lead evaporate on the last, his ball hitting everything except short grass and leading to gnarly situations like this:
Back in 2022, Pereira took a drop, overshot the green with his third and, now needing to get up and down for bogey to join Thomas and Zalatoris in the play-off, saw his fourth stroke trundle on and on and off the front. Where he missed another chip back.
Eventually, 12 minutes or so after he put his tee in the ground, he rolled in a five-footer for double-bogey, with best friend and fellow Chilean starlet Joaquin Niemann holding his head in his hands a few yards away
Later, in the play-off, Thomas continued his stellar Sunday form to bag his second PGA Championship and the $2.7 million top prize, while Pereira had to console himself with that $870,000 pot.
A cool $1.83 million loss in 12 minutes of pure theatre and, without any real doubt, the most expensive few minutes in golf history.
Ghosts of Winged Foot
The events called to mind a similar blow-out from Phil Mickelson at the Winged Foot US Open in 2006, when Leftie’s drama saw him double to wave goodbye to the tournament.
On that occasion, though, the financial loss was *just* $723,000, and Mickelson was already well in the black in any case — he was gunning for a third straight Major, and had 29 total Tour victories to his name by that point.
Even allowing for inflation — and all of us know how that’s been going — Pereira’s $1.83 million meltdown dwarfs that of Mickelson.
But there’s more
That’s just the common-or-garden Tour earnings, though.
And as anyone who pays attention to the upper echelons of golf’s money kingdom, earnings pay the bills but the real dollar is to be made from endorsements and investments.
Exact figures are hard to come by, but a report by Sportico last year gave some insights into the endorsement potential of hitting the big time at the top of the game.
Leaving Tiger Woods aside — his one-year earnings were estimated at $62.2 million, with almost all of it coming off the course, but Tiger is, after all, the exception that created the rule — several more players earned more, much more, off the course than they did on it.
Even with his historic victory at the 2021 PGA, Phil Mickelson’s off-course earnings dwarfed what he earned inside the ropes, by a factor of ten: $42 million in endorsements and investments compared to $4.1 million in prize money.
Rory McIlroy ($28 million in endorsements and investments vs $4.8 million in earnings), Jordan Spieth ($25 million vs $4.6 million) and Hideki Matsuyama ($10 million vs $5.4 million) were others who earned way more off the course than on.
While Pereira would not have expected revenues like that to flow his way immediately, the implication is clear: Major success leads to major endorsement opportunities.
Add in his geographical appeal — Pereira would have been the first South American to win a Major since Argentina’s Angel Cabrera in 2009 — and further opportunities arise.
South America may not be the most robust continental economy in the world, but with a population of more than 420 million and a collective GDP of more than $3 trillion, there is plenty of cash circulating for the first person, and a golf Major winner is always the right person.
Overall, it’s not at all outlandish to suggest that on top of the $1.83 million which went directly down the plughole on Sunday, a further $8 million in endorsement opportunities disappeared in about the time it takes to make an omelette.
Perspective
Despite playing a central role in golf’s most expensive few minutes, Pereira can console himself with a fine week overall — as he said in an interview on CBS just a few minutes after the drama, he came into the PGA just hoping to make the cut and ends it having leapt from 100th in the world rankings into the top 50 for the first time (he started the 2021 season on the Korn Ferry in 312nd).
Not to mention the fact that his earnings this week take him past the $2 million mark for the 2022 year, leaving the $370,000 he collected in 2021 well and truly behind him.
His star remains steeply on the rise, and it will be interesting to see how he responds to his experiences here.
While there are plenty of similarities between him and Van de Velde — lesser known players from non-English-speaking countries blowing it spectacularly on the final hole of a Major — there are plenty of key differences too.
Van de Velde was 33 and already a journeyman professional before Carnoustie in 1999, having won once in his career, six years before the Open.
He won just once more, in a tiny European Tour event on Madeira Island seven years later, but he would never really recover, and in recent years his biggest role in the public consciousness has been as one of the star subjects in a Netflix series about sporting calamity.
Pereira, on the other hand, looks like a different beast.
He’s still just 27 and this is his first season on the PGA Tour. He claimed his Tour card with two back-to-back victories on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2021, and came close to winning a medal for Chile at the Olympics in Japan, losing out at the third extra hole in a seven-way play-off for bronze.
Last Sunday in Oklahoma is sure to sting — in the mind as much as in the pocket — but if he can somehow find a slippery but healthy dose of perspective, he has all the time, and all the skills, to be just fine.