Do PGA Tour Players Own Their Own Private Jets?

When they get to the financial level where they can afford to do so, many top tour golfers prefer to travel by private jet rather than on commercial airlines. Some golfers have taken this a step further and, rather than charter jets, they own them.

Some have taken it a further step still, and have got their own pilot’s licence. Perhaps the most famous golfer pilot was Arnold Palmer.

He only retired from flying planes when he was 81, by which time he had spent nearly 55 years as a pilot and had logged almost 20,000 flight hours. He also has a flying world record.

In 1976 he and his co-pilots Jim Bir and Bill Purkey circumnavigated the globe in a business jet in 57 hours, 25 minutes, and 42 seconds. The journey was made in a Learjet 36 and broke the previous record by more than 28 hours.

Palmer has been described as a very good pilot. The seven-time Major winner reckoned that piloting a plane was “a lot like golf. The thing that was most important was that you used your head and did only what you thought you knew you could do.”

Greg Norman, who learnt the fly in the 1980s, had not originally intended to become a pro golfer. “I lived next to a Royal Australian Air Force base where F-111s were taking off,” he explained. “I was probably 13 or 14, and I was infatuated by them. In high school, I was doing the preliminary training to join the Air Force and become a pilot."

Buying versus hiring

Another whose youth had a strong aviation influence was Phil Mickelson. His father was a naval aviator and Phil himself earned a pilot’s licence and bought a Gulfstream V.

But he later sold it. He explained that when he and his wife “would travel to the mountains to go ski, I would need to know months in advance when I was going to go, so that I could get a hangar. Otherwise, if the plane sits outside, things freeze. And there is a huge additional expense that always comes up.”

Instead he decided to charter private jets instead through VistaJet as he: “can tell them hours in advance, and they drop us off wherever we want to go and they deal with all the logistics.”

Jon Rahm was another who gave up private jet ownership – in his case a fractional ownership deal – to use VistaJet.

He explained the advantage of a private jet: “I flew the Bombardier Global 7500 to Spain for a tournament, it was such a good flight. I went from the main cabin to the couch to the back bedroom, which had a library and office space. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. I had my dinner and went to bed and slept a solid eight hours, easily. It was the only time I’ve ever flown over the Atlantic with such a big time zone change and never had any jet lag.”

Partners

NetJets, which describes itself as “operating the largest, most diverse private aircraft fleet in the world” is another private jet company heavily involved in tour golf.

Since 2014, it has been the ‘Official Private Jet Provider of the PGA Tour’. It also holds this position for The Open Championship.

The company partners with 50 tour golfers. The transport managers at tournaments have a busy time working out flight schedules, depending on who is exiting the tournament at what day and time, and where they need to go and so who they may be able to share a jet with.

Much of the latter also depends upon where the golfer is travelling to. That many PGA Tour golfers are based in Orlando in Florida helps matters in this regard.

One US Ryder Cup player, was unhappy when he had to share a private jet flight with a European Ryder Cup player he did not know and had always sought to avoid, feeling he would not like him. But they bonded during the flight and became friendly on and off the course.

Ernie Els and Steve Marino, who had also hardly known one another, also became friendly after sharing Els’ jet – this despite having a fight during their 15-hour flight to the US from Japan.

As Marino remembers it: “We were with mutual friends, we had never met before and he asked what I did. I said I was a golfer. He asked me where I played and I said, ‘dude I play on the PGA Tour, I’m about three spots ahead of you on the money list.’ He loved that.”

Els offered him a ride back on his jet from a tournament in Japan they would be playing in two months’ time.

On the day of the flight “It started off a bit rocky,” Marino remembers, “as I beat him in the tournament and he had to wait two hours for me as he finished well before me on the Sunday. But we get on the plane, it’s just us two, and we’re getting on fine, having beers, a nice steak, a bottle of wine."

"But then he didn’t want to let me by to go the bathroom and gave me a couple of headbutts, so I returned the favor.”

It ended up with the two of them wrestling on the floor. They stopped, Marino remembers “when the pilots came back and yelled at us.”

A story Tiger Woods’ former coach Hank Haney tells is of a time when Ian Poulter allegedly hitched a ride uninvited, on Tiger Woods’ jet. Woods put on his headphones and ignored Poulter, but texted Haney, who was sitting talking with Poulter: “Can you believe this d*** mooched a ride on my plane?”

Tiger Woods is one of those golfers who has his own private jet.

Tiger Woods’ Gulfstream G550

The first production G550 flew in July 2002 and about 600 of these jets were produced before production ceased in July 2021. Tiger’s one is said to have been built in 2008, and to have cost him £48m to buy.

The cabin height is 6ft 2in; its width 7ft 4in and length 43ft 11in. Depending upon the internal layout, it can seat up to 19 passengers. Tiger’s one has its own bedroom with en suite shower.

The normal range is 6,580 nautical miles or 7,572 miles. The maximum speed is 488 knots per hour, which is 562 mph.

Rory McIlroy’s Gulfstream G650ER

Rory previously owned a Bombardier Challenger 605, which was said to have cost him $30 million. This jet was wider and shorter than Tiger’s with a cabin width of 8ft 2in but a length of only 28ft 5in. Its range was 3,834 nm or 4,412 miles.

But he now owns a 2022 Gulfstream G650ER which he bought second hand. A brand-new model could set you back by about $78 million. Or rather could have, as production of this model has now ceased. It has been superseded by the G800.

The model is one of the fastest private jets and can reach 600 knots per hour, and has created various speed records. The cabin height is a generous 6ft 5in, the width is 8ft 6in and it is 46ft 10in long. Its normal range is 7,095 nm or 8,164 miles.

Rory does like luxury – and to change his tastes. In 2010 he bought himself a watch “with diamonds around it. It was horrific. I can't believe it was like the worst purchase ever. It was so bad.”

Flying home from a tournament in Shanghai in 2019 he explained that “it was just me on the plane, and I just got this massive sense of guilt come over me, just because this can't be good and all that sort of stuff. So we ended up reaching out to the GEO Foundation who do a lot of great sustainability things in golf."

McIlroy now invests in schemes to offset his carbon footprint, explaining “I wouldn't self-profess to be an eco-warrior. But I'm someone that doesn't want to damage the environment. So how can I make my travel around the world neutral?"