Golf’s $10 million nobodies

Golf has reached the eye-watering end of the season in the United States. By Sunday night, one man in a baseball cap will walk off the 18th green in Atlanta $10 million richer. This week is the final event in the FedEx Cup play-offs, a four-week season-within-a-season on the American Tour in which a total of $67 million is up for grabs for the top 125 players. Not a bad reward for a sunny afternoon trying to put a white ball in a hole in fewer strokes than everyone else. Being a golfer is one of the few jobs where the less work you do the richer you become. As Alan Partridge in his sports interviewing days put it to one of the world’s finest players, ‘So, Seve Ballesteros, only 63. Not very good is it? Everyone else has got a lot more.’

For most of the players this week, the money really doesn’t matter — an exception can be made for Henrik Stenson, the Swede who is having the season of his life after almost going bankrupt when he trusted his money to Allen Stanford.