How to Make $90k Playing Simulator Golf as a Side Hustle

Jordan Weber thought his competitive golf career was over.

After starring as a college golfer at the University of Northern Iowa, Weber tried to make a living on various mini tours. A couple of years in, however, he came down with a nasty case of the yips during 2010 PGA Tour Q-School.

“The nerves got to me,” Weber told MyGolfSpy last week. “My right hand would twitch and I could barely make (a putt) from two feet. From there, I lost confidence and tried all sorts of different putters and nothing ever really worked.”

Unable to regroup mentally, Weber had to give up tournament golf. For most of the ensuing decade, he would only play three or four times per year. When he did get out on the course, it wasn’t serious.

Weber had grown up in the small Iowa town of Bernard, a place where his family’s cows outnumbered the population (just over 100). He found golf around 12 years old but had become obsessed since then, chasing his dream of being a professional.

But for Weber, the reality set in that he wasn’t going to be able to pursue golf as a profession. That dream had died. He got a job at Wells Fargo in the financial institution’s analytics chain, working there for more than 11 years. He had two kids, Kyler and Myles, with his wife, Carly. He had a normal life without playing golf to earn a living.

But out of nowhere, his professional golf career returned to him in the most unexpected fashion.

All it took was getting a simulator

In a bit of serendipity, Weber’s brother-in-law owned a business (and a warehouse for that business) in Des Moines. The two of them, both passionate about golf, decided to see if they could start a simulator golf business out of the warehouse back in 2022. Weber had long been a huge fan of simulators because he enjoyed comparing his stats to Tour players and he was looking to branch out business-wise.

They bought a Uneekor simulator and installed GSPro software. As they were trying to get the simulator business off the ground, Weber discovered weekly tournaments on the GSPro platform.

That marked a seismic shift in how Weber thought about his previously dormant competitive golf.

Suddenly, the intensity and drive had been replenished.

“That’s what really fueled the fire for me,” Weber said. “I started practicing and kept getting better. (GSPro) has a world golf ranking and I got to No. 1 in the world in that. It just got me loving the game again. It clicked in my head, ‘Of course there can be tournaments all the time because you don’t have to travel. This is really fun.’

“I never thought it could turn into something where you could play for a lot of money.”

That led to Weber and his brother-in-law buying a Trackman iO. Weber had been impressed by the graphics, responsiveness and accuracy of the unit so he thought it was worth investing in for the business.

After gaining traction with the GSPro tournaments, Weber caught wind of the Trackman NEXT Tour which offered big money. He went to a Net Par in Omaha where they had Trackman and was able to play in his first event, walking away with a few hundred bucks.

The other effect was Weber “started practicing all the time” to learn the nuances of the Trackman system so that he could be better prepared for tournament play.

Weber got good. Really good. In Season 2 of the NEXT Tour—which featured seven events and tournament purses between $100,000 and $226,000—Weber won the 2024 championship and made $90,000 along the way.

The seven tournaments were 18-hole shootouts, the purse being funded from entry fees and marketing dollars Trackman wanted to put to good use. Weber was playing from the warehouse with music in the background. You can watch his entire round of the NEXT Tour Championship here to get an idea of how it works. (Trackman mandates that each competitor records their entire round to ensure there is no cheating or other “hacking” of the system.)

Just like that, Weber was making enough to start considering this as his full-time job. And his actual full-time job for the moment is running the golf simulator business so it would make sense.

The craziest part? Weber received actual professional golf starts as part of winning the NEXT Tour Championship. He got to play in one DP World Tour event and three Challenge Tour events—he made the cut in the one of the Challenge Tour events.

How did competitive simulator golf become a thing?

Competitive sim golf is in its infancy.

There are other competitions and tournaments outside of the Trackman NEXT Tour but nobody else is offering this amount of money on a consistent basis.

There a few reasons why it has started to catch on like it has.

The simulator technology is so reliable. Some of the earlier attempts at competitive leagues struggled because you could fiddle with ball placement and sensors but that is becoming less possible as loopholes are closed.

The pandemic. Simulator popularity exploded and many people have them in their homes. If they don’t own one, most golfers can find a Trackman or other simulators in their area.

Competitors don’t need to travel so there are few tournament expenses. Courses for the NEXT Tour are announced about a week in advance so everyone can practice virtually in preparation for the real round.

There is no qualifying. I repeat, there is no qualifying. You, MyGolfSpy reader, can pay the $130 entry fee for the NEXT Tour, find a Trackman and give it a go. The events are limited to the first 1,000 competitors but that is purely on a first-come, first-served basis. Only one of the seven tournaments last year reached 1,000 players. (The final tournament is limited to the top 100 competitors on the money list. There is a $50,000 bonus pool for the top 10 finishers on the order of merit.)

Where is all of this heading?

There were 24 golfers last year who made five figures on the NEXT Tour.

Who are they? Many of them are Challenge Tour players. In other words, they are “minor league” European golfers looking for opportunities.

Of the top 15 golfers on the money list from 2024, only two of them were American—Weber and the No. 2 finisher, Nick Carlson. Carlson, a 28-year-old former University of Michigan golfer, won Round 6 last year on the NEXT Tour.

Of the remaining 13 players in the top 15, Scandinavia factored in heavily. There are six golfers from Sweden, two from Denmark and two from Norway.

There were only 15 Americans in the top 100 of last year’s rankings. You would think that the U.S.—the top country in the world for aspiring professional golfers toiling in obscurity—would be more involved in the best simulator golf league. Maybe that will change.

On the question of how much sim golf differs from regular golf, Weber says there are a few key differences that require some adjustment, even for great players.

When it comes to putting, you have to learn how the software works. You will be given an incline percentage and you have to adjust to that despite the uphill or downhill not existing in reality. So if a putt says three percent downhill, you have to hit it softer. It’s a numbers game with figuring out speed. There is a “gimme circle” for putts within eight feet so it’s mostly about figuring out how to hole longer putts. (In case you were wondering, Weber uses a broomstick putter now so the yips are no longer an issue.)

If a ball is above or below your feet in the virtual fairway, the Trackman system will make the ball react to that condition even though your actual swing is on a perfectly flat lie. Judging that properly takes time.

The same goes for hitting from the rough. Golfers aren’t required to move their ball to longer artificial turf; every shot is played from the same location. Trackman will give a range of how much distance could be taken off on a shot from the rough. For example, you might see 80 to 90 percent on the screen for a shot from the rough, meaning the shot’s distance will be reduced by 10 to 20 percent. You aren’t sure exactly what kind of lie you have.

Distance is paramount. While shots can go in the water or OB, every ball that is in play gets found. And if you are near a tree or another obstacle, your swing doesn’t get impeded. “You can swing pretty hard at it and not have to worry about losing your ball or being in a bad place,” Weber said.

You are often playing these tournaments with music going on in the background which is a stark departure from the staid nature of professional golf. “I practice that way and it kind of makes it more fun,” Weber said.

Those are adjustments but a lot of players can make them appropriately. Weber’s advice to aspiring competitive sim golfers is to practice around the greens as much as possible.

“It takes time to master but it’s definitely a shorter learning curve than outdoor golf,” Weber said.

With leagues like the TGL starting up two months from now, a lot of golfers like Weber are hopeful that sim golf is more accepted as “real golf” in the coming years.

A second chance at a pro career

Something Weber said near the end of our chat really struck me. It was about gratitude.

“Someone like me, I’ve just wanted to play a PGA Tour event or a DP World Tour event my life,” Weber said. “I started to get to an age where I made peace that it’s just not going to happen for me. I was fine with it but it’s just something I really wanted.

“When this came up and happened, it was just so emotional for me. It was this thing I always wanted but thought I could never get. I finally got the chance to do it and it was the most amazing experience.”

Maybe he wins the NEXT Tour again and gets four more starts on the professional stage.

Imagine that. He didn’t even have to go outside to rekindle his pro golf career.