December 22nd, 2025
By Australian Golf Digest
Golf participation in Australia continues its unprecedented rise, surpassing four million adult players in 2024-2025 – the highest total ever recorded.
With participation up 5.2 percent and social memberships growing more than four times faster than traditional club memberships, Golf Australia also announced the launch of Golf Australia Club, a flexible handicap subscription designed to support the growing number of regular golfers who are not yet part of a club.
The findings, released in the 2024-2025 Golf Club Participation Report, reveal that one in every five adult Australians played on a course, driving range, simulator or mini-golf venue last year.
Traditional golf club membership grew strongly, rising to 477,220 members nationwide, marking the fifth consecutive year of membership growth and a remarkable 24.1 percent increase since 2017-2018 – the strongest sustained period of club membership growth in three decades.
The report found growth is being fuelled by new and emerging audiences:
41.6 percent of new members are younger than the age of 35, double the proportion of existing members.
Junior membership surged 17.9 percent, with the number of under 18-year-old members more than doubling in the past five years, up 112 percent. This has been driven by record growth in national participation programs, including over 40,000 registrations for MyGolf powered by Ripper GC (up 11 percent) and a 25 percent increase in TeeMates flexible junior memberships.
Women’s participation continues to rise, supported by the Get Into Golf program for adults new to golf which is up 10 percent year-on-year. Women representing almost 88 percent of all Get Into Golf participants, while 25.8 percent were born overseas, reflecting deliberate efforts to extend golf’s reach across diverse community groups. The Australian Golf Foundation’s Junior Girls Scholarship Program has also expanded to about 1,400 girls across 160 clubs.
Beyond traditional play, off-course golf continues to boom, with more than 1.5 million people hitting balls at driving ranges, indoor simulators and entertainment-style venues.
Photograph by jacoblund/istock
