A golfer's income is a mix of separately-natured bets. Not a wage.
He earns across four streams, one of which usually dominates, and what he earns is a realized price, not a read on his worth. The engine prices prize money, bonus pools, guaranteed money, and endorsements on their own terms and never blends them, reports what he earns and, separately, what he is worth, names the gap, and carries every projection as a distribution with two dials. Every dollar figure lives in the Value Reference, flagged v0.
Four streams. Never one number.
Total earning capacity is the sum of four separately-natured streams, each priced on its own terms: prize money, performance-driven and non-guaranteed, with a hard floor at zero, priced directly from the expected-finish distribution the Simulation Engine produces; season bonus pools, points-driven and even more top-heavy; guaranteed money, the one stream paid regardless of performance; and endorsements, performance times marketability, often the dominant stream. Pick a golfer and watch the mix.
The mix differs enormously by golfer, a journeyman living on prize money and a marketable star earning most of his income off the course, and the engine never blends them into one undifferentiated number, because they carry different variance, drivers, and persistence. A stream paid regardless of performance and a stream that is zero after a missed cut are not the same money. Four separately-natured streams, priced on their own terms, and never blended into one number.
Illustrative engine read on the real four-stream structure (prize money from the finish distribution, bonus pools, guaranteed money, endorsements, each on its own terms). Composite golfers, demonstration figures, all dollars v0 and in the Reference.
Two numbers. Never merged.
What a golfer earns and where he ranks, his winnings, his money-list and ranking position, his realized endorsement and guaranteed income, is the realized price, the bet that got made. What he is worth, his projected earning capacity and his worth to a sponsor or backer or team, is the value, the read on what the bet should be. They are two numbers, and the engine never merges them.
Driven by his marketability, his ranking and majors, and whether he fills the sponsor's category need. A different number from his prize-money worth.
They differ because the realized price is set partly by forces outside the golfer's value, a hot stretch, a bidding war, a sponsor's category need, timing, so the engine reports both and names the gap. And value is value-to-party: the same golfer is worth a different number to a sponsor, a backer, and a team-event side, because each is buying a different thing. Price is what got paid; value is what it should be; and value is different to every party.
Illustrative engine read on the real price-versus-value structure (realized price and projected value as separate numbers, the gap named, value-to-party across sponsor, backer, and team). Composite golfer and parties, demonstration figures, all dollars v0.
A distribution with width. Never a bare figure.
No value is a bare number: an earnings projection is a distribution with real width, because prize income is non-guaranteed and high-variance. The two dials govern it, read confidence for how well the golfer is known, and outcome variance for how wide the earnings distribution is, and the engine never folds them into one. Folded in is the aging-and-longevity curve.
Golf's long, gently-declining career makes longevity a real earnings asset, so the career-earnings projection runs the streams forward across the aging curve, tapering slowly rather than falling off a cliff. Confidence re-prices the instant an input changes, and every projection stays a distribution with two dials, because a value without a band is a false precision. An earnings projection is a distribution with two dials, and longevity is a real earnings asset.
Illustrative engine read on the real earnings-distribution structure (the two dials on money, the aging-and-longevity curve, the career-earnings projection run forward). Composite golfer, demonstration figures, all dollars v0 and in the Reference.
The engine prices prize money, bonus pools, guaranteed money, and endorsements on their own terms, reports what a golfer earns and, separately, what he is worth, names the gap, and carries every projection as a distribution with two dials, because a golfer's income is a mix of separately-natured bets, not a wage, and a value without a band is a false precision.
The income is four bets, not a wage. See what prices them.
The value read prices the four streams on their own terms and feeds the career strategy and the contract and endorsement layers, holding price and value apart.