Thanks to Korn Ferry Tour pro James Nicholas, the cost of making it to the PGA Tour is now clearer than ever.

The Yale alumnus pulled back the curtain in an Instagram video, listing every expense from flights to groceries from the recent Bahamas Golf Classic at Atlantis presented by Korn Ferry Tour. He played well enough to make the cut and finish in 58th place. But even a successful week on the grass can lead to a losing bank account.

Nicholas shared that the flight to the islands cost him $368. His room at the resort set him back a massive $2,427 for the stay. He paid his loopers $2,076 to carry his clubs and read the greens. Food and groceries cost another $1,222 because the Island prices are very high. And what he earned for finishing 58th with a -12 total score?

$4,070.

He walked away with a net loss of $2,024 despite playing good golf all weekend.

And in his words, “Yes, we could have done it cheaper… but I’m a big believer of making yourself comfortable and fueling your body with what it needs to perform its best.”

Luckily, a new $15,000 stipend from the tour helped cover this loss, but it will not cover all the expenses throughout the season. Last season, Nicholas played in 26 Korn Ferry Tour events and one PGA Tour event in 2025. Throughout that journey, he earned about $255,000 in total prize money but spent over $151,000 on travel, caddies, and coaches to stay in the game.

His biggest expense was his caddie, who took home $58,000 for the long season. He also spent $27,747 on hotels and $17,036 on various plane tickets as he crisscrossed the country to chase his PGA Tour dream. Then there’s the YouTube team, where Nicholas spent $13,100 to help grow his social media.

But it’s not always a loss.

Sometimes sponsors like Protiviti and Greyson help him pay the bills when he misses cuts. And sometimes the gambles paid off, and the big league actually paid for the whole week.

During the 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont, Nicholas made the weekend cut. That special week in Pennsylvania earned him a $43,544 in prize money. He saved a lot of cash because Lexus provided a free car for players. Even his flight home was on a free private jet from another sponsor. He walked away with a clean profit of nearly $35,000 that time.

Still, we can’t ignore the brutality of the losses and how it affects the players. Other veterans also agreed.

4x PGA Tour winner Kevin Kisner says that players usually only keep about thirty percent. The team and the tax take a huge slice of the check.

“I usually call it about 30%,” Kisner told Josh Baylin on the Market Swings podcast. “8% to a caddy, 3% to a coach, 1% to a putting coach. Then you got your state you played in taxes, your South Carolina 7% taxes, and your federal taxes. You can do the math pretty quickly, right?”

Retired pro Kevin Chappell also admitted that money problems are pushing many players to the brink. There is no safety cushion or covered expenses on the minor tours for the field. And especially after the Tour trimmed the number of players coming in from Korn Ferry, “it’s harder and harder to have long careers that you have seen in the past.”

The financial stress becomes even heavier when the weather and the rules work against your dreams. This brings us back to Nicholas.

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The rain that shattered a season’s dream

All of these money talks happened right after a very sad event in Georgia at the 2025 Q-School at Valdosta.

Nicholas almost earned his way onto the PGA Tour late last December. He was just one shot out of the top-10 and a spot in final qualifying, where the top-5 finishers would earn a PGA Tour card for 2026. One more good round would have sent him to the final qualifying event.

In the final round, Nicholas was again playing great golf and was four under par through 13 holes when the play stopped. He was well within the number to move on to the next stage. But the officials paused play, waited, and then invoked the bylaws to cancel the final round entirely.

This decision reverted scores to 54 holes, eliminating Nicholas’s late Sunday charge painfully and instantly pushed him out of the top ten on the leaderboard.

The Tour decision left many awestruck. The weather ruling wiped away a $7,000 investment he made for the week. Nicholas spent $4,500 just to enter and $1,500 on his travel and housing.

“We’ll just have to work hard and get ready for January to start up for the Korn Ferry Tour season,” Nicholas said after the event. “I’m excited. I’m ready. But yeah, that s–ks.”