Making it to the top of the game can be very expensive. Tournament entries, travel, accommodation, food, caddies and plenty more outgoings mean that the sport loses plenty of talent simply because a number of Pros just can't afford to keep going.
Epson Tour (the tour below the LPGA) player Hannah Gregg, who has over 165,000 followers across Instagram and Twitter, put it very frank when talking about the finances on the satellite and mini tours where a $1,000 check was up for grabs but the event cost $600 to enter.
On women’s mini tours levels, I’m not sure people understand the ratio of expenses to prize money. My last event, there were 32 girls. 2nd place got $1k. Entry fee is $600. Add in practice round, gas/flight to AZ, food + hotel for 4 days, and you’ve played unreal golf and lost $$February 28, 2021
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For many aspiring players, making money doesn't even seem to be top of their agenda. Surviving, and covering their costs, comes first before they can even think about building up funds.
Pros struggling to finance their playing careers can't practise the same as the top players, might have to take on extra work and miss out on opportunities due to a lack of funds.
Luckily for ten golfers who don't have big financial backing, a new initiative called 'Carry' is there to help.
Carry allows fans to invest in aspiring top tour Pros, with investments starting from $250. The benefits include unique access to the players, access to golf trips and events, discounts from brand partners and a percentage of the golfers' future earnings from events with $1.5m+ purses. Carry also gives out annual dividends to the 'Fan Investors'.
Carry holds the funds in an escrow account and pays out monthly distributions to its players to ensure that they can continue on their paths to making it out onto the PGA and LPGA Tours.
Donnie Dotson, founder of Carry, explains the three reasons why he started the company:
- "A belief that a person’s starting financial situation shouldn’t have an outsized impact on their potential for success. While hard work and talent are important, people (just like businesses) often need a financial boost in the early days to increase the likelihood of realizing their dreams.
- "A personal discovery from the earliest days of Covid-19 – while most of the big tours were on hiatus – that there is a ton of talent competing on developmental and mini tours around the globe. But the players are competing for much smaller purses than those on the big tours.
- "And finally…I love golf. I’m a huge fan of the sport and love to play as much as I can myself. But I never had any real connection to the pro game until I started researching how golfers fund their careers. I started talking with pros, learning their stories, and became addicted to following leaderboards of tours I had never heard of in the hopes that these players would do well. I was emotionally invested long before we had contributed a dollar to a pro."
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"Carry solves two problems for the average mini tour player- we need funding, and a platform to organize that funding," Epson Tour player Hannah Gregg said.
"It can be scary entering into agreements like this on your own because you hear horror stories of pros entering predatory deals that can damage their career before it’s even started. Carry gives Pros and Investors a safe way to join the players' Core Team.
"Carry is a game changer for me because I have worked full time jobs for the last 3 years, making enough to survive and play a limited schedule, but that always severely stunted my growth as a pro. I would get into Epson Tour events and couldn’t play because I couldn’t afford to get there. I know there are so many Pros out there going through the same thing.
"Many of the Pros you see on TV are the results of friends and family and clubs chipping in to help them stay afloat long enough to get their big break. And sometimes, having the skill to play at the top doesn’t guarantee you will get there. You need thousands of dollars in resources and cash to make it happen."
