The TeachMe.To 2026 Annual Golf Report - Golfing on the Rise
Golf lessons on our platform grew 61% last year. The broader golf industry grew 5%. We outpaced the market by a factor of twelve.
That number alone would make for a good year. But the story underneath it is more interesting, and frankly, more fun to tell.
Average lesson prices fell 5% while demand surged. Our coach network expanded 56%, with hundreds of new instructors joining the platform. And markets nobody was watching, like Las Vegas and Pittsburgh, came out of nowhere to become real players.
Golf instruction is getting cheaper, more accessible, and spreading to places it never reached before. The people taking lessons look different than they used to. The coaches teaching them are building real careers doing something they love. And there's a pipeline of 24 million Americans who say they want to try golf but haven't started yet.
We're genuinely excited about what we're seeing. Here's what we learned.
The Numbers
That price drop is worth celebrating. When demand increases and prices fall, it usually means supply is catching up and competition is working. More coaches entering the market, more options for students, lower barriers to getting started.
The golf lesson that cost $150 five years ago now has alternatives at $80. That opens the door for a lot of people who were priced out before.
Who's Playing Golf Now
The National Golf Foundation tracks this stuff obsessively, and their 2025 data (https://www.ngf.org/graffis-report/the-graffis-report-2025/) tells a remarkable story. A record 47.2 million Americans played some form of golf last year. On-course participation hit 28.1 million, the highest since 2008.
But here's what we find most encouraging: 28% of on-course golfers are now women, the highest proportion ever recorded. 25% are Black, Asian, or Hispanic, also a record. Female participation is up 2.3 million since 2019, a 41% increase. Black participation is up 123%.
These aren't small changes. The sport is becoming more representative of who actually lives in this country. And it's happening at the grassroots level: public courses, driving ranges, simulator bays. People are finding their way to the game through all kinds of entry points, and then they're looking for instruction.
That's where we come in.
Las Vegas Grew 233%
We track about two dozen metro areas closely. Las Vegas was a modest market for us in 2024, nothing particularly notable. By the end of 2025, it had more than tripled.
We had to double-check the numbers. They held up.
A few things happened at once in Vegas: year-round weather that lets you play and practice any day, a tourism economy that brings golfers in from everywhere, and a population boom from California transplants who already had the golf bug. The new master-planned communities in Henderson and Summerlin are literally built around golf courses.
Vegas showed us what happens when population growth, weather, and golf culture collide in a market where coaches are ready and willing to teach. It won't be the last market to do this.
The Pittsburgh number is the one that made us scratch our heads. It's not Sun Belt, not warm, not a golf destination by any traditional measure. But indoor simulators have changed the equation. You can take lessons year-round now in places that used to shut down for five months. Turns out Pittsburgh really wants to golf.
Sacramento, Miami, Phoenix, San Diego, and San Francisco all grew between 63% and 75%. Every single market we track showed double-digit growth. Not one went backwards.
California Still Runs the Show
For all the momentum in the Sun Belt, California remains the center of gravity for golf instruction on our platform. Los Angeles alone accounts for about 13% of total volume, more than any other market by a wide margin. San Francisco is second. San Diego, San Jose, and Sacramento all land in the top 15.
California has everything working in its favor: population, wealth, golf culture built over decades, and weather that cooperates year-round. It's where the volume is, and we expect that to continue.
But the growth is happening elsewhere. Texas, Florida, Arizona, Nevada. The next few years will probably see those markets close the gap. California coaches shouldn't worry. There's plenty of demand to go around.
Top markets by lesson volume:
Los Angeles
San Francisco
Dallas
Miami
San Diego
New York
Houston
Atlanta
Phoenix
Chicago
863 Coaches
Our coach network hit 863 active golf instructors in 2025, up 56% from the year before. We're proud of that number, and even prouder of the people behind it.
These are PGA professionals, former college players, and passionate amateurs who decided to build careers around teaching a game they love. Some of them teach full-time. Some fit it around other work. All of them are helping new golfers fall in love with the sport.
Here's something interesting: coach growth outpaced student growth. That's unusual. In most marketplaces, demand surges first and supply struggles to catch up for years. Golf instruction is different right now. People want to teach. The profession is attracting talent instead of scraping for it.
Our coaches are concentrated where you'd expect: California leads, then Texas and Florida. Los Angeles has the highest coach density of any single metro.
The capacity is there to handle more students. The question for us is whether we can recruit and onboard coaches fast enough in the markets that are suddenly taking off. Las Vegas going from small to major in one year caught us a little by surprise. We'd rather be ahead of the next one.
The Instruction Market
IBISWorld (https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/golf-instructors/6317/) sizes the U.S. golf instruction industry at $2 billion, growing at 8.5% annually for the past five years. That growth has real drivers behind it.
Technology has changed how lessons work. Launch monitors give coaches swing data they never had access to before. Simulators let people practice year-round in cold climates. Platforms like ours connect students with coaches they'd never have found through word of mouth at the local club.
The NGF says 24 million Americans who don't currently play are "very interested" in trying golf. That's a larger number than the current on-course population. If even a fraction of them actually pick up a club and decide they want to get better, the instruction market has years of growth ahead of it.
We think they will. The game is more accessible than it's ever been, the entry points are multiplying, and the coaching infrastructure is ready to welcome them.
What We're Watching for 2026
A few things are top of mind as we head into the new year.
Coach recruitment in high-growth markets.
Las Vegas went from small to significant in twelve months. Orlando, Dallas, and Tampa aren't far behind. We want coaches in place before the demand curve gets ahead of us.
Indoor instruction.
Pittsburgh's growth came largely from simulators making lessons a year-round business. That model works in any cold-weather market. Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston, Denver. There's opportunity sitting there.
Price accessibility.
The 5% price drop happened naturally, through competition and coach supply growth. We think that's a good thing. The golf lesson should be something a normal person can afford without agonizing over it. We want to keep that trend going.
The 24 million.
That's the number of Americans who told the NGF they're very interested in playing golf but haven't started. They're waiting for something. Lower barriers, the right coach, a friend to invite them, a TopGolf visit that sparks something. When they're ready, we want to be there.
The fundamentals are good. Demographics are shifting the right direction. Participation is at record highs with a huge reservoir of latent demand. Coaches are entering the profession because they want to, not because they have no other options. The infrastructure for instruction, from technology to platforms to facilities, is better than it's ever been.
We had a really good year. The conditions for next year look even better.
Sources
[National Golf Foundation, Golf Participation Report](https://www.ngf.org/short-game/golf-participation-growing-diversifying/)
[NGF Graffis Report 2025](https://www.ngf.org/graffis-report/the-graffis-report-2025/)
[NGF Golf Participation in the U.S. 2025](https://www.ngf.org/member-publication/golf-participation-in-the-u-s-2025/)
[USGA, Golf's New Narrative](https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/articles/2025/03/golfs-new-narrative.html)
[IBISWorld, Golf Instructors in the US](https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/golf-instructors/6317/)