Jordan Spieth and the color of money

There will be plenty of other green to go with the green jacket golfer Jordan Spieth picked up with his brilliant weekend performance at the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia. Golf Digest suggests the $1.8 million first prize purse will be just a tiny part of his take-home pay this year. The magazine predicts the 21-year-old Texan will make at least $25 million in tournament winnings and endorsements. That would put him in some rarefied air-- surpassing Jack Nicklaus and placing him in the top-5 moneymakers among all golfers.

Yahoo Finance Editor in Chief Andy Serwer believes to join that elite circle, you have to be more than good on the links.

“The thing you need to do to be one of these top guys is to jump from being a golf icon to being a pop culture icon,” he argues. “That’s what it takes.”

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Of course, Tiger Woods-- with his long-running Nike (NKE) deal, among others-- is head and shoulders number one, pulling in $54.5 million for 2015, according to the magazine.

Yahoo Finance’s Aaron Task says that’s because Woods long ago made that leap to cultural icon…thanks to his association with Nike.

“He was a global brand and Nike put a lot of marketing muscle behind him,” he says. “I don’t know if Under Amour (UA) is going to do the same with Spieth.”

But Task thinks it might be a very good idea for the sports apparel company to “Tiger-fy” its new star, who just signed a 10-year extension of his endorsement deal earlier this year.

“The marketers say they love him because he’s so young, he’s the All-American boy, he’s very polite, he thanked his mom and dad and all that good stuff,” Task points out. “The money he’s going to make, it’s staggering.”

Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Michael Santoli says it’s obvious the golfing world has really been waiting for someone like Spieth.

“You can tell how the industry is just celebrating this because there has been such a long, post-Tiger hangover,” he notes. “So, clearly having a 21-year-old guy with that kind of a future, they’re going to latch onto him.”

And Serwer adds a player who just became legal to drink is quite different from one of the golfers who’s has been near the top of the earnings list for quite some time.

“I was surprised to see Arnold Palmer up there at 85 years of age,” he says, joking with Santoli. “I thought you said he was making money off his drinks, you know, the lemonade and iced tea.”

Santoli is happy to play along with the gag.

“The royalties that come off of that go a long way,” Santoli laughs. “It’s so refreshing.”