LAS VEGAS (AP) — For all those golfers who complain about the rising cost of playing a round, how does $200,000 sound? And that's the fee just to tee off.
The World Series of Golf plans to host a tournament for amateurs next year in Las Vegas that will cost $200,000 to enter and offer a $1.5 million payout for the winner.
Play would follow the format of the World Series of Golf, which debuted last year. This year's event, with a $10,000 entry fee for each player, finished Thursday at the Las Vegas Paiute Golf Resort.
Rules are loosely based on poker, with players betting on their strokes with poker chips. Players can go all-in after their tee shot, or fold and move on to the next hole if they hit a lousy shot. The player with the fewest strokes each hole wins the pot for that hole. Automatic bets, or antes, increase every three holes, driving up betting and the pots.
Organizers think they can find 25 players willing to ante up the $200,000 entry fee. Five more players would get in, without paying the $200,000, by being drawn randomly from a list of 125 players in the $10,000 buy-in World Series of Golf a week earlier.
Terry Leiweke, president of the World Series of Golf, said players told him they'd be up for risking more money.
"Clearly they want to play big, high stakes events," Leiweke said.
