How Much Cash Do You Carry?

On tour, it’s anywhere from $0 to a lot more.

- Dave Shedloski

We begin with a disclosure: When you ask folks in all walks of golf life a personal question, it’s only fair to answer it yourself. The question was this: “How much cash do you have on you . . . and why?”

Cash is still king, right? Even in this age of credit cards and electronic banking, people still carry cash. OK, well, most people.

I had $182 when I stopped Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee at the Open Championship last summer at St. Andrews. To Chamblee’s credit, he was forthcoming. (One major champion declined—old school.) Chamblee, a former PGA Tour player, was carrying $80, plus £70. “I usually carry about $300,” he said. “I’m not extravagant. I mean, if this is a contest, then Phil Mickelson is going to win it.”

Well, it isn’t a contest, just a survey. And we’ll get to Phil in a bit. But what did we learn?

One surprise was that a few golf writers actually carry more than some players. Aren’t writers supposed to be broke? Another surprise, and a nice one, was that most people with cash on hand were thinking of others, mainly in the tipping department. That says a lot about people in the golf business.

What was no surprise is that the vast majority of players carry a little more cash than the average person. Beyond tipping the locker-room attendants and assorted other service providers, there are real uses for cash. One is that players want to make sure they’re not stiffing anyone if one of those Tuesday practice-round bets— supposedly banned by the tour—goes bad.

It seems like every week we’re reading a story about cash being dead, dying or degraded. As we were preparing this story, Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple, was predicting the demise of money . . . while promoting the Apple Pay alternative.

Hmmmm. Seems correlative.