Our 2026 Operations and Compensation Survey breaks down overall revenues for the entire membership and by position type. Overall, member coaches averaged $210,139 in revenues last year. They also averaged $32,978 in key expenses that included revenue split back to the facility; rent/lease payments; teaching technology; continuing education; marketing and training aids purchased. This created a net after key expenses of $177,161.
Among coaches who are employees, they averaged revenues of $180,441 while coaches who are independent contractors averaged 41 percent more at $253,930. Academy Owners with multiple instructors averaged 112 percent more than employees coming in at $381,814.
It was one of the strongest growth years we’ve seen in our 18 years conducting this survey. Overall average revenue increased 15 percent from a year ago. Employee revenues were flat. Academy Owners were up 26 percent and Independent Contractors were up 31 percent.
These increases occurred in part due to the fact that the typical Proponent Group coach was in front of students teaching about an hour and a half more per week on average over the past year than in 2024 with an average of 29.6 hours per week actual teaching time versus 28 hours the previous year. At 29.6 hours weekly this is approximately 1,480 hours of billable teaching annually spread over 50 weeks.
As has been the case for many years in our annual Operations and Compensation Survey and again in the 2026 results, less than half of all coaches’ revenues come from one-on-one private golf lessons. This year’s survey found that 43 percent of member revenues ($90,066 out of $210,139 total average revenues) come from one-on-one private golf lessons as programming offerings continue to broaden as some of our coaches tap into nearly a dozen different revenue streams. This private lesson percentage was the lowest we’ve recorded in the history of our survey, down 3 percentage points from a year ago.
The largest additional revenue contributors, after private lessons ($90,066) and salary ($33,356) were long-term coaching programs averaging $31,738, basic group lessons and clinics at $24,120 and golf schools at $8,060.
While coaches often talk about passive income (revenues produced for the coach when they are not personally teaching) they have remained relatively small. Only $13,187 on average out of $210,139 or just 6 percent. (This included revenues from staff coach payments, endorsements, coaching a school team, tournament winnings, membership sales commissions, media payments and hardgoods sales commissions.)
Online and remote teaching receive a lot of attention these days, but the payoff has thus far been elusive. Revenue from internet lessons only averaged $3,051 per Proponent coach over the past year, comprising just 1.5 percent of total revenues. A few coaches are beginning to build a significant online business, but only 33 percent of our coaches reported online lesson revenue (this number has hovered in the low 30s for the past few years). For those who reported online lesson revenue the average earned was $9,199 but the median amount was $2,000 which shows that only a tiny percentage of coaches have figured out how to generate significant online lesson revenues while the rest continue to just dabble in this space.