NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — There is a lot of money on the line this week at the PGA Championship, but for two players on the leaderboard at Aronimink Golf Club, the $3.89 million winner's cheque would amount to little more than a rounding error to their family fortune.
Maverick McNealy: Sun Microsystems Heir
Overnight leader Maverick McNealy has earned $22.5 million on the PGA Tour and has been ranked as high as 10th in the world. However, a decade ago, the Stanford business graduate was torn between pursuing a life as a professional golfer and a potential career in investment banking. McNealy's father, Scott McNealy, co-founded Sun Microsystems and oversaw its sale to Oracle for $7.4 billion in 2010. The elder McNealy has an estimated net worth of $1 billion and last year sold the family's California home, complete with a hockey rink, for $35 million. McNealy, 30, and his three brothers were avid hockey players growing up and all played for the San Jose Junior Sharks minor hockey team.
"This is obviously new territory for me," McNealy said after Friday's round of co-leading a major. "But I am confident that it's going to go into the experience bank, and good or bad, I'm going to learn a lot from it. And really excited to test my game in ways it hasn't been tested before, and I think this is the next step for me as a professional is competing and playing well in this type of tournament."
Kristoffer Reitan: Norwegian Retail Empire Scion
Last week, many PGA Tour golf fans were introduced to another billionaire heir when Norway's Kristoffer Reitan took home $3.6 million for winning the Truist Championship at Quail Hollow in North Carolina. Reitan, 28, might not have been a familiar name to most North Americans, but back home he might be right up there with Elsa and Anna with an estimated family fortune of $9 billion. His grandfather Odd Reitan started a retail business that includes over 1,000 stores, and his sister Viktoria Reitan is a popular singer in Norway.
Four years ago, disillusioned with the game, Reitan seriously considered giving up his dreams of playing professional golf. His fallback plan was not the family business, however; it was YouTube golf. "I just had some thoughts about how to make the game a little bit more fun, a little bit more relaxed," Reitan said last week after his win. "I was just trying to find ways to make it more fun to give my journey in golf a little bit of energy, and trying to have fun while I'm playing so that I can endure the hardships that follow, yeah, with professional golf." He added that he had serious chats with production companies to bring a YouTube show to fruition but never got there.
If McNealy and Reitan end up in the same group on Sunday, what are the chances they add a little side game to make it worth their while?
