That course is beautiful and one of my top 5 courses I’ve played but he was awful in it.
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Well that’s enough Dave Fink for one lifetime
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I’ve also never understood having the only restroom behind the 3rd tee after a reachable 5 and a PW/Gap par 3, tucked away from all other holes except maybe 5 green. Like who has to go at most 20 minutes after leaving the shop.
Then again, I can’t recall the last time I used a restroom on a short 9 hole muni.
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I think they used to have one in the brick structure after four green on the way to 5 tee and next to 7 tee
Really impressed by the fact that Big T was on a podcast that somehow stayed on the rails. Have to imagine there’s 4-5 hours of material on the cutting room floor of him raving about The Power of the Dog and doing everything in his power to undermine the authority of the podcast host.
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Members of UK courses gorging themselves on tourist revenue, thus keeping annual fees low for members, can hardly have it both ways.
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Cross-posting here. Phoenix munis just introduced a premium early booking fee. Not sure how I feel about it. One attempt at unclogging the nine day in advance midnight booking cluster.
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This is something we are considering implementing at my course, Hooper GC. Like most businesses we are dealing with rising labor costs, also the explosion in costs for fertilizer/chemicals, inflation in general and so golf courses must find ways to raise revenue.
Premium early booking does make me slightly squeamish - but I do know that they are a (virtually) cost free way courses can raise revenue - without having to raise membership and greens fees rates (or at least not as much).
Some will view this as one more way golfers are getting squeezed. But there are benefits as well - let’s say a wedding party wants to play a course and they need to have a tee time at 9:00 3 months from now. I assume they will happily pay the extra ~$10 dollars to ensure they get that spot.
Like most things there are tradeoffs and if these types of initiatives, and the rationale for doing them, are communicated clearly by golf courses, I think golfers will be more accepting (or at least less hostile).
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11 bucks sounds steep, but I’m not against it in principal if it keeps out the scumbags. Curious, what kind of greens fees are we talking roughly? 11 bucks would be more than 20% the cost of the actual round at most courses in northeast Ohio. If I had to pay maybe 4-5% premium for advanced or preferred booking, I wouldn’t hate it.
@kvv have you heard from people who pay a “membership” cost for preferred booking at munis? Cleveland’s parks system has an annual “bonus rounds” program where you pay 30 bucks for the year but you get 20% off greens fees and you get a couple extra days for booking. It’s a good deal that pays for itself after about two rounds and seems to eliminate the bots issue.
This time of year the City of Phoenix courses get up to $70ish IIRC.
Listened to the podcast this morning about the Bethpage system. Not surprised at all that bots got onto that system. But I felt a little let down at the very end because it seems like nothing is being done about it?
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unfortunately it seems like time and resources are needed from the state to address it and i bet golf tee time sniping is pretty low on the list
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This was a great episode. I was born and raised on Long Island and grew up playing bethpage with my grand father. Back then he knew people at the course to get us tee times. As an adult I have found it extremely hard to get tee times there and always knew something was wrong here. Something mentioned but not focused on is that all the courses at bethpage are the same way not just black and red. It’s still impossible to get any tee times there. It is a shame because like what was said that I have been paying taxes here my entire life and in the past 6 years have only been able to play there once. That is not right and needs to be fixed. My question is how do we force the state to fix this. How do we go forward knowing what we know to be true but state won’t acknowledge it. How do we hold them accountable for not caring for their own state residents. Something needs to be done but feel if we the people that are affected by this don’t stand up and do something it will never be changed because they are still going to make their money one way or a nothing. Its not even like the facility is that great you would think all the money they are making plus tax money they get the club house would be fixed up. I know the courses are usually in great shape but just seems like this facility should be one of the best in the country and isn’t even close. It hasn’t changed since I was 8 and that was 35 years ago. New York state has majorly dropped the ball on this and I think there is more going on here then we know. I think you guys should start a petition to send to the state for them to take notice how many people are actually pissed about this and to look into where the money is going cause the club house looks like it needed an update and repairs 20 years ago.
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This is how change occurs! People get furious at a lack of action and pressure politicians to do something!
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This is not a troll comment. What municipalities are doing a good job with desirable public tee times? Sweetens Cove / Landman have issues with getting their websites to work when they open their tee sheets. Bandon has moved to a lottery. Pebble Beach has extortionate minimum stay requirements.
These tee times are highly desirable/valuable, so it creates an incentive to game whatever the system that is being used.
Locally, Chambers Bay has premium pricing & paid upfront for advanced tee times, so if you are planning a trip to the area you can guarantee a time.
I think that some of these courses need to move to something more similar to that. You want to book Bethpage Black for next summer. No problem. It’s $500 per person paid upfront, no changes, no refunds unless the course is closed.
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These courses are not municipal. They are businesses.
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I am not trying to troll. If even businesses can’t figure this stuff out, how can municipal facilities?
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This would backfire mightily. A publicly-funded state park with an amenity that only rich people can access.
A Bethpage Tee Time is certainly a valuable / desirable thing, but not so much that every day, every tee time, across 5 courses, fills up within seconds of being released and every cancellation is filled within a millisecond. Someone is standing in between the courses and the players.
Nobody is asking for it to be perfect, it just shouldn’t be rigged.
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I think most businesses don’t care much about getting it right, as long as the times are all paid for. There should be more incentive for a tax payer funded entity to get it right, or at least put some effort into making sure the system isn’t being rigged. They already employ multiple full time IT personnel, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect them to put a little effort into making sure taxpayers who want to use the public park have a fair shot to do so
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Fair!
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