Charl Schwartzel Player Profile

CHARL SCHWARTZEL woke up this morning $4.75m richer than when he arrived at St Albans last week.

The South African won the inaugural LIV Invitational at Centurion Golf Club, for which he picked up a cool $4m and he also collected a further $750,000 for being a member of the winning team element. 

He dropped a shot at the last for a closing 72 that left him seven-under-par and one clear of South African compatriot Hennie Du Plessis.

Understandably, the 37-year-old South African was pretty pleased with his week's work. He said: "Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think we could play for that much money in golf.

I took a bit of heat down the stretch and there was a lot of money involved."

After all the fanfare, the 54-hole tournament turned out to be something of an anti-climax, with 40 of the 48-man field finishing over par. Andy Ogletree, who finished dead last on 24 over par for three rounds, picked up $120,000. Not bad work if you can get it.

And that could be a recurring theme. When you have a 156-man field you know that many of them are going to set the course on fire on any given week. But with limited fields, and many of those competing long past their prime, the odds are high that many of them are going to struggle - and especially so if their chances of playing competitive golf are limited to eight tournaments a year.

It takes rather more than money to create a proper golf tournament and this 54-hole event proved that beyond the shadow of a doubt. The crowds were pretty sparse and it didn’t help that the LIV Golf website crashed regularly throughout the tournament.

Schwartzel resigned his membership of the PGA Tour before they could suspend him. And Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed and Pat Perez have also now announced that they will be in the field for the next LIV event, in Portland at the end of June.

Who Is Charl Schwartzel?

Schwartzel won The Masters in 2011 and reached a high of sixth place in the world rankings the following year. He has two wins on the PGA Tour, 11 on the DP World Tour and nine on the Sunshine Tour. He has played in the Presidents Cup four times. He began the week at Centurion ranked 126th in the world and with a scoring average of 72.145. He has won $20,912,493 in prize money on the PGA Tour.

He averages 301.1 yards from the tee, hits 55.52% of fairways, hits 60.98% of greens in regulation and averages 3.46 birdies per round. He averages 29.07 putts per round. He missed six successive cuts on the PGA Tour earlier this year before finishing in a tie for 10th at The Masters.