13 Golfers With Private Jets, and the Ones Who Just Borrow Them

Fewer golfers own a private jet than the internet suggests. Of today’s biggest names, only Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy have a personal jet that the public record ties to them: a Gulfstream G550 and a Gulfstream G650ER.

Most of the rest fly private without owning anything. Scottie Scheffler is partnered with NetJets, Bryson DeChambeau has used a NetJets timeshare, and Phil Mickelson sold his Gulfstream after 20 years to fly VistaJet.

This list sorts 13 golfers by how they actually fly: owners, NetJets flyers, borrowers, and the legends who built golf’s aviation culture. Where a tail number is public, we checked it against the FAA registry release of September 24, 2026.

Golfers Who Own Their Jet Today

Owning a long-range jet makes sense for a golfer with a global schedule and a few hundred flight hours a year. It is also expensive, which is why only the very top of the game does it.

1. Tiger Woods: Gulfstream G550

Tiger Woods flies a 2008 Gulfstream G550, serial number 5209. The FAA registry lists it as N517TW, registered to GTW Corp of Jupiter, Florida.

The G550 was the benchmark ultra-long-range business jet from 2003 to 2021, with more than 600 built. It flies 6,750 nautical miles, about 7,770 miles (12,500 km), which covers Florida to Scotland for the Open Championship with fuel to spare.

Woods has never disclosed what he paid for it. Prices quoted in headlines are usually new-jet list prices, not what a 2008 airframe sells for.

The jet is also famous for something else: fans track it to guess his tournament schedule before he announces it. The full story, flight log included, is in our guide to Tiger Woods’ private jet.

2. Rory McIlroy: Gulfstream G650ER

Rory McIlroy is reported to fly a 2022 Gulfstream G650ER, registered N1989R. The number ends in 1989, the year he was born.

You will not find his name on the registration. The FAA lists the owner as TVPX Aircraft Solutions, a trustee, with the current certificate issued in August 2024. Trust registration is a common way for high-profile owners to keep their name off public records.

The G650ER is a clear step up from Woods’ G550. It flies 7,500 nautical miles, about 8,600 miles (13,900 km), and tops out at Mach 0.925.

That range matters for a player who splits his year between Florida and Northern Ireland. Gulfstream completed the last G650 in February 2025, so the type is now out of production and replaced by the G800.

Golfers Who Sold or Borrowed a Jet

3. Phil Mickelson: Gulfstream V, Then VistaJet

Phil Mickelson owned a Gulfstream V for about 20 years. He is a certified pilot, but he left the flying of the jet to professional crews.

Around 2019 he sold it and moved to VistaJet, a subscription operator. “The greatest decision I made after owning a plane for 20 years was selling it and going with VistaJet because it has reduced my stress levels exponentially,” he said in 2021.

His reasons are the hidden costs of ownership. A ski trip meant booking a hangar months ahead, or the jet sat outside in the cold, and every one-way family trip meant flying an empty jet back across the country.

The GV itself was built from 1995 to 2002 and flies 6,500 nautical miles, about 7,500 miles (12,000 km). It is the airframe the G550 grew out of.

4. Rickie Fowler: Puma’s Gulfstream V

There is no public record of Rickie Fowler owning a private jet. His best-known private flight was on someone else’s aircraft.

In October 2019, a couple of weeks after his wedding to Allison Stokke in Cabo, sponsor Puma lent the couple its company Gulfstream V for their honeymoon flight to South Africa. A photo Stokke shared from the jet showed the Puma logo clearly.

That is a common pattern in golf. A sponsor’s jet, a management company’s jet, or a NetJets card often sits behind a “golfer with a private jet” headline.

Golfers Who Fly NetJets Instead

NetJets became the official private jet provider of the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions in 2014, and the deal now runs through 2028. When it was extended in 2023, NetJets sponsored more than 40 PGA Tour players.

That is why so many tour pros fly private without owning a jet. A fractional share, a jet card, or a sponsorship gives them the aircraft without the crew, hangar, and maintenance bills.

5. Scottie Scheffler: NetJets

No aircraft in the FAA registry is registered in Scottie Scheffler’s name. He is partnered with NetJets and flies its aircraft to events.

It fits his image as golf’s least flashy superstar. The biggest name of his generation flies the same way as dozens of his peers.

6. Jordan Spieth: A Fractional Gulfstream

AvBuyer reports that Jordan Spieth flies a Gulfstream G550 through a fractional ownership share rather than owning one outright. Other outlets list a Citation X instead, so treat the exact type as unconfirmed.

7. Bryson DeChambeau: A NetJets Timeshare

Bryson DeChambeau’s jet story is the best advertisement for owning your own plane. At the 2021 Wells Fargo Championship, he flew home to Dallas thinking he had missed the cut, then learned he had made it.

He had a timeshare agreement with NetJets, which needed six hours’ notice to schedule a flight. He took a 2:45 a.m. flight instead, landed in Charlotte at 6:20 a.m., and shot a 3-under 68 that Saturday.

Plenty of other stars fly the same way. Our roundup of athletes with private jets covers how stars in other sports fly.

The Legends Who Built Golf’s Jet Culture

8. Arnold Palmer: Cessna Citation X

Arnold Palmer is the original golfer-aviator, and he did not just own jets. He flew them himself for 55 years, logging nearly 20,000 hours after learning to fly in his hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

He owned 10 aircraft, from an Aero Commander 500 to the Cessna Citation X, which he registered as N1AP after his initials. At 81 he flew his last trip as pilot in command, Palm Springs to Orlando, on January 31, 2011.

His hometown airport was renamed Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in 1999. The registration N1AP is still active today, on a 2002 Citation X held by an LLC in Latrobe.

Palmer sits at the head of a short list of sports stars who were genuine pilots, alongside the names in our guide to celebrities who are pilots.

9. Jack Nicklaus: Gulfstream GIV-SP “Air Bear”

Jack Nicklaus worked through almost every business jet of his era. “I had Lears, Cessnas, Sabreliners, and JetStars,” he told Business Jet Traveler in 2019, before moving up through a used GIIB and then a Gulfstream III, a GIV, and a GV.

In 2019 he was flying a Gulfstream IV-SP registered N1JN and nicknamed Air Bear, after his Golden Bear nickname. He said the jet “paid for itself 10 times over” by turning month-long overseas trips into one or two weeks.

The registry adds a postscript. N1JN is no longer on an active aircraft; since July 2022 the mark has been reserved in Jack W. Nicklaus’s name, so the Air Bear now flies under another registration or not at all.

10. Greg Norman: Lockheed JetStar, Then Gulfstreams

Greg Norman’s first jet was a Lockheed JetStar. “I bought a Jetstar around 1988. I paid a million dollars for it,” he told Business Jet Traveler.

He moved on to a Gulfstream III and later built a close relationship with Gulfstream. By 2020, though, Norman had stopped owning and was chartering a Gulfstream GV and a Cessna Citation X.

11. Sergio Garcia: Hawker 4000

Sergio Garcia took ceremonial delivery of a Hawker 4000 at the EBACE show in Geneva in May 2009. He had flown a Hawker 850XP for three years before that.

“My schedule takes me to four continents and routinely back and forth from Europe to the United States,” he said at the handover. Whether he still flies the Hawker has not been reported.

12. Ernie Els: The Most Famous Flight in Golf

Ernie Els is on this list for one flight. For years, a story circulated that he and fellow pro Steve Marino ended up wrestling in the aisle of Els’s private jet on the way home from a tournament in Japan.

In June 2018, Els confirmed it on the No Laying Up podcast. “It was just myself and Stevie coming from Japan to Palm Beach,” he said. “We had a lot to drink.”

Marino added his side on a 2024 podcast, recalling that the two “consumed a lot of alcohol on the plane” before the pilots came back to break it up. Neither man has named the aircraft type in his account.

13. Payne Stewart: The Jet That Was Not His

Payne Stewart often appears on lists of golfers with private jets, but he did not own the Learjet 35 he died in. N47BA was operated by Sunjet Aviation and chartered for the flight, and its titleholder was a company called Jet Shares One.

On October 25, 1999, the jet left Orlando for Dallas with two pilots and four passengers. It stopped responding to air traffic control during the climb, and an Air Force F-16 later found it cruising at about 46,400 feet with the windows apparently frosted over.

The Learjet flew on until an engine stopped, most likely from fuel exhaustion, and crashed near Mina, South Dakota, killing all six aboard. The NTSB found that the crew had been incapacitated after failing to receive supplemental oxygen following a loss of cabin pressure, for reasons it could not determine.

Why Top Golfers Fly Private

The case for flying private is simpler for a golfer than for most celebrities. The tour moves every week, events sit near small regional airports, and a missed connection can cost a tee time.

Nicklaus put a number on it: overseas trips that took three or four weeks commercially took one or two by private jet. For a player whose income depends on showing up rested, that time is the product.

The case for owning is narrower. Mickelson’s switch to VistaJet and Norman’s move to charter show that even the jet-loving generation often decides a fractional share or a card is simpler, and golfers are only one slice of the celebrities with private jets we track.