NGF Short Game: Golf’s Never Ending Quest

Golf cannot be mastered. Some play purely for fun… and there are millions who play who don’t even keep score. For others, golf is a never-ending quest to get better.

Improving at golf is a personal goal that, pardon the analogy, isn’t so different from trying to lose weight. Common to both objectives is the interest in a “silver bullet” promising a fast and easy result. 

Equipment companies sell millions of clubs every year because buying a better game is so much easier and more instantly gratifying than instruction and practice. Lowering your score and trimming your waistline both require knowledge, but also real discipline and time.

The golf instruction industry generates over $1.5 billion annually, with golfers taking nearly 27 million lessons last year, according to our latest consumer studies.

And yet, the reality is that only about one-in-five golfers takes professional instruction, whether it be with a PGA or LPGA Professional at a traditional green grass facility, at dedicated instruction centers like GOLFTEC, with fellow students at golf schools, or through fee-based online platforms like GolfPass or Performance Golf.

The majority of golfers take a do-it-yourself-ONLY approach, whether that’s trying to dig their own swing out of the dirt (as Ben Hogan used to say), practicing tips they see in golf publications, on golfdigest.com or golf.com, on YouTube or on social or other media. Some just swing their swing and don’t worry about the mechanics behind it.

That said, of the approximately 5.2 million golfers who take lessons with a professional instructor, almost three-quarters of them acknowledge that they also watch golf instruction videos online via YouTube or something similar with regularity. So, there’s undoubtedly an appetite for improvement among this avid audience.

Compared to pre-pandemic estimates, the number of green-grass golfers taking professional instruction has risen by more than 1 million.

It may be intuitive, but typically the more skilled and committed golfers have a greater likelihood of seeking professional instruction, no doubt with hopes of shaving a few more strokes off their USGA handicap index. And teaching is commonplace with the game’s youngest participation cohort, as most youth development programs have an instructional component.

Unfortunately, it’s those who need it most, the higher handicappers and adult beginners, who are generally less inclined to take lessons, doing so with less frequency than the national golfer average. However, it’s also these groups that represent the largest share of total instruction revenue based on their representation in the overall participation pool. It’s a volume play from that standpoint, as more than 60% of golfers shoot average scores above 90 and almost three-quarters of beginning golfers are adults.

And perhaps most notably for those in the space, the pool of current golfers who haven’t yet dipped their toe in professional instruction but indicate they’re at least “somewhat” interested in doing so is more than 2x that of those who currently do pay for professional instruction.

As golf continues its broad evolution, fueled in part by incremental gains in participation and play, the golf instruction category has grown in lockstep, especially as new technologies, approaches, and types of engagement emerge. Because there’s always room for improvement, especially in golf.