We need to go back to phone tee times only at muni courses.
I’m convinced its the only thing that will stick. Sure we can get our governments to look into it and hire pople to go in and remove some malicious accounts.
But that only buys you time. New accounts will get made and the botting will continue.
I don’t see cities ponying up for software that prevents inauthentic/bot input on their sites, especially when sites like ticketmaster son’t even have working software solutions to combat bots.
Could also require checking IDs at check in. At least one of the players has to be the person who booked the time. Must match the name on the credit card.
Step 1 at any place where tee times sell out within seconds is to require a deposit and ensure that each account has a unique CC number associated with it. I don’t think that would eliminate bot stuff entirely but would likely help.
Give locals the best access by 2 days. Make them register with actual id verification that a bot can’t do. Every round they book, they need to show their drivers license at the shop. Flag the ones who don’t.
Has anyone used or heard of GolfDistrict? It’s software that treats tee times the same as event tickets. Prepaid, transferable, with insurance coverage. www.golfdistrict.com
I haven’t used it yet but it solves a lot of problems IMO.
I have two suggestions if you really want to get it fixed.
Find a sympathetic state legislator. It looks like Bethpage is in the district of Assemblyman Jake Blumencranz. If Jake isn’t interested, find another member who plays golf and understands the issue. If you or someone on your side lives in their district, even better. They’re far more likely to listen to someone who can vote for them and tell other people in their district how helpful they are.
Come with solutions. Most legislators are working on dozens of issues at a time that they (or their voters…or their donors) personally care about. When they’re working on something for an interest group or constituent, they’re far more likely to take action if you come to them with a solution and not just the problem. Make it as easy as possible: this is a problem, here’s how you become our hero and fix it.
You need someone in the state assembly to put pressure on the New York State Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Them calling up Randy Simons and telling him they need this looked into will be far more impactful than you making the same call.
I am resisting the urge to dive fully in here as I live 750 miles away, but it looks like Assemblyman Blumencranz is a member of the Committee on Science & Technology (and the Internet and New Technology Subcommittee) and the Consumer Affairs and Protection Committee.
Maybe you could spin the bot issue to fit in those areas of interest.
I think I’d have a way to fix it, but once again I don’t think courses really care all that much (for reasons, the courses tee times are fully booked, I am sure that these tee times are at least 90% attended too).
My suggestion is if you book a tee time, upon showing up you’d need to show your ID. If you booked for 2-4 people you’d need to forward that reservation to their email where they’d have to either create an account or you could create a guess profile under your name where their IDs had to be shown and it had to match. For a multitude of reasons I get why they don’t want to enforce these policies (the first person to have a tee time cancelled because the names didn’t align I’m so sure would handle it well, especially if they might be a few drinks down. Additionally you might have issues with staff/etc not fully understanding and what not.
Also just make it so like after 3 cancelled tee times, you get like a 3-4 month probation period. I know this has issues, but just a suggestion
I live in LA and there’s not much improvement honestly. People just cancel less now. There are definitely still bots being used. Before, you would get a refund if you canceled a day before. So a day before is when you could usually snipe a tee time. So I think the deposit for the tee time doesn’t really persuade that many people to only book if you’re gonna show up. Even now logging on first thing 9 days in advance is still pointless because all the tee times are mysteriously gone still.
Lately I’ve been doing singles cues most weeks at one of the local publics courses. I would say every time I show up, I’m on the tee in the next 20 minutes at most. I pretty much don’t even worry about booking a tee time because I know I can just show up and play. Obviously this kind of defeats the purpose of a tee sheet.
