HEATHROW, FL – Golf coaches in Proponent Group’s membership averaged revenues of $210,139 last year, against out-of-pocket expenses averaging $32,978, to garner a net after key expenditures of $177,161. Those are the top-line numbers generated by Proponent Group’s exhaustive annual Operations and Compensation Survey, just completed and summarized for exclusive member use.
“This is our 18th year conducting the survey,” said company president Lorin Anderson. “It generates a deep matrix of data that our coaches can use to negotiate agreements and make sound business decisions and projections.” A 31-page full report on the survey’s findings was delivered to members last week. Sub-categories within the summary include coaches who are W-2 employees, those who work as independent contractors and others who operate multi-instructor academies. The Proponent membership is generally made up of industry veterans with an average of 20.3 years of coaching experience.
Survey takers answered questions designed to reveal the structure of their working life and their compensation. Their responses revealed, for example, that 56 percent of them pay a revenue split to a host facility and the average revenue share back to the facility held steady from a year ago at 23 percent. At private clubs the average was 19 percent and at public facilities it was 26 percent.
“Average revenues for our coaches have grown more than 30 percent from the 2020 earnings baseline, versus overall inflation of roughly 25 percent during that time,” said Anderson. “Interestingly, only 43 percent of member revenues come from one-on-one private golf lessons. This was the lowest level we’ve ever seen as program offerings that involve groups and long-term coaching continue to broaden.”
The private-lesson activity for golf’s more successful instructors tends toward long-term relationships that lead to significantly improved performance. For that reason, the coach needs to properly calibrate a volume-discount factor that works for both parties. “Our survey gets granular on pricing and programming,” Anderson said. “We know, for example, that the average discount off rack rate for a 5-session package is 12 percent, for a 10-session package it’s 15 percent and for a 20-session package it averages 17 percent. This information is extremely valuable for our members because they are effectively siloed at their facility and typically don’t have access to what other coaches are doing in their businesses.”
Proponent Group members who completed the survey are welcome to request an individualized report, with data specifically customized to their job title and facility type.
About Proponent Group
Proponent Group is the only organization solely focused on helping golf’s dedicated, full-time instructors grow their businesses and build their careers. Founded in 2007, Proponent Group recognizes that even accomplished teaching professionals need a unique array of professional services to build their teaching brand, create job security and grow compensation. If you are a full-time coach and would like access to this or other company-provided support tools, you can join Proponent Group at proponent-group.com.
We’ve harvested all the comp-and-ops information generously provided by Proponent members and packaged it for review in our annual 31-page summary report. To view the full 2026 report, log on to the member-only website and click the green Compensation Survey Results button or simply click this link.
Whether you’re negotiating a new contract, examining industry trends or working to understand all the business opportunities potentially available to you, this report is the first place you should look for help. Most of the data in the report is broken into categories such as Employees, Independent Contractors and Academy Owners, to provide a more accurate comparison to your situation.
While the compensation data is extremely valuable, you’ll also want to dive into the operational information we’ve accumulated….
The all-important annual dollar figures plus an array of other metrics have emerged from Proponent Group’s brand-new 2026 report on member Operations and Compensation. That data reveals how much our coaches are earning for their efforts and how they’re evolving their operations to leverage a changing business landscape. You can read a one-page general summary of these latest findings by clicking this link (or by clicking the NEWS button on our website homepage).
For right now, a few highlights: Average member revenues in 2025 were $210,139, while primary out-of-pocket expenses averaged $32,978—that produced a net after key expenditures of $177,161 across the entire membership. Asking survey participants about their long-term goals, we added a question this time around about retirement nest eggs. The average savings for retirement last year was 8.8 percent of net revenues. More than two-out-of-five coaches saved 5 percent or less for retirement over the past year. Meanwhile, 8 percent of coaches were able to save more than 20 percent of their gross revenues earmarked for retirement.
As mentioned in the March 5 edition of Member’s Minute, overall member revenues in 2025 were $210,139, while primary out-of-pocket expenses averaged $32,978, producing a net after key expenditures of $177,161.
For coaches who offer volume discounts for multi-session packages, the average discount off rack rate for a 5-session package was 12 percent. For a 10-session package it was 15 percent and for a 20-session package it averaged 17 percent.
Online lessons made up only 1.5 percent of overall revenues last year. That percentage has slowly climbed from 1 percent over the past five years.
At the height of the Covid-19 wave the amount of teaching time with students peaked at an average of 32.1 hours per week. Since then, we’ve seen a slow decline to the current 29.6 hours per week, on average. That translates to approximately 1,480 hours of billable teaching time annually (spread over 50 weeks).
About Proponent Group
Proponent Group is the only organization solely focused on helping golf’s dedicated, full-time instructors grow their businesses and build their careers. Founded in 2007, Proponent Group recognizes that even accomplished teaching professionals need a unique array of professional services to build their teaching brand, create job security and grow compensation. If you are a full-time coach and would like access to this or other company-provided support tools, you can join Proponent Group at proponent-group.com.
