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 and some of our coaches tap into nearly a dozen revenue streams. This private lesson percentage was the lowest we’ve recorded in the history of our survey, down 3 percentage pointsfrom a year ago. Private lessons made up 50 percent of Employees’ revenue. For Independent Contractors it was 37 percent of their revenues.
As for overall revenues by position type, employees averaged $180,441 while coaches who are independent contractors averaged 41 percent more at $253,930. Academy owners with multiple instructors averaged 111 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 14 percent from a year ago. Employee revenues were flat. Academy Owners were up 26 percent and Independent Contractors were up 31 percent.
This past year found coaches averaging of 29.6 hours per week actual teaching time. This average has gradually decreased since 2021 when the average number of hours of teaching time with students peaked at 32.1 hours per week. At 29.6 hours weekly this is approximately 1,480 hours of billable teaching annually spread over 50 weeks. This is down from a little over 1,600 hours in 2021.
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 $14,178 on average out of $210,139 or just 7 percent. This included revenues from staff coach payments, endorsements, coaching a school team, tournament winnings, membership sales, media and sales commissions.
Online and remote teaching also gets a lot of attention these days but, so far, the average revenue from internet lessons only averages $3,051 per coach over the past year, 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. 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.