Eddie Pepperell has been a touring professional for more than a decade now.

After turning pro in 2011, the now 35-year-old has gone on to win two DP World Tour titles.

Pepperell is by no means one of the star names in the professional game, but he’s undoubtedly one of the most entertaining.

He has played in 10 major championships throughout his career, including The Masters in 2019 and he finished in a tie for sixth at The Open Championship in 2018.

Pepperell has amassed $9.47 million in career earnings on the DP World Tour throughout his career, but as he has just explained, he will not have seen anywhere near that amount after shelling out on taxes, caddies and coaches etc.

Eddie Pepperell reveals average outgoings for tour pros

Pepperell revealed that the average outgoings for a professional golfer at the highest level are around $200,000, while speaking on the Business of Sport Podcast.

“The bulk of that will be made up of accommodation, travel and caddie costs,“ the Englishman explained.

“I actually wrote a recent substack on this and I tried to dive into a bit more detail.

“Yeah, there are fixed costs that generally don’t move a huge amount and then there are some, you know, not fixed costs, like a caddie percentage or a coaching percentage.

“So if you earn a a million pounds in a year ($1.33 million), well, 200 grand is just gone on percentage expenditure, and then you’ve got all your fixed costs on top. Then, of course, you get taxed.

“So a rule of thumb as it was explained to me when I first turned pro by my accountant, and he was spot on, was you will see about a third of what you receive.

“And I think that’s right when all is said and done, it is about 33% that you end up net profiting, which, of course, is still an awful lot of money during a good year as a professional golfer.“

Now, if you’re one of the top 50 or so players in the game, that isn’t an issue at all. For instance, Scottie Scheffler won just over $30 million on the PGA Tour last year.

Playing professional golf is more costly than people think

He probably would have paid around $6-8 million in caddie fees, coaching fees and the like. While there is no income tax in the state of Texas, professional golfers have to pay tax in the states they win their paychecks in.

It’s fair to say that Scheffler would have had to pay out at least $15 million of the $30 million that he won throughout the season in taxes, considering the states he played in this year. He is still an incredibly wealthy man, as is every other player who is ranked inside the top 50 or so in the world.

However, when you start to fall outside of the top 50, things get a lot harder, even more so outside the top 100, and so on and so on. If you are missing cut after cut every week, you still have to fork out for travel expenses and caddie costs.

At certain levels of the game, there will be occasions when some players have to make the cut in order to pay their mortgage that particular month. That is what playing under real pressure means.

Unfortunately for some, playing professional golf is unsustainable financially. As Eddie Pepperell said, pro golfers’ spend roughly $200,000 per year on outgoings. By the time you’ve been taxed and have paid your caddie and coaching staff, you probably need to have earned at least $1 million in tournament winnings to be comfortable financially.