Since 1934 the American PGA Tour has been keeping records of its biggest winners during the course of each year.

Of course, the amounts of money may have changed, but the prestige of being the leading earner ahead of all of your peers has not.

Paul Runyan won a total of seven Tour events in 1934, bringing home a total of US $6,767, but the amount of prize money on offer quickly increased and Byron Nelson banked almost six times that amount just 11 years later, albeit having won an incredible 18 Tour events. Tiger Woods is by some way the highest career money-earner on the Tour.

The European Tour's money list was known as the Order of Merit until 2009, when it was replaced by the new Race to Dubai, a competition which will reward the highest earners on Tour during the year with further bonus payouts.

The money list is calculated in euros, although around half of the events have prize funds which are fixed in other currencies. In these instances the amounts are converted into euros at the exchange rate for the week that the tournament is played.

Other tours, for example the Asian Tour and Australasian Tour, also compile their own money lists of each year's biggest earners. The respective winners in 2008 were Jeev Milkha Singh and Mark Brown.