Now this is intriguing. Penciling in a Mardi Gras weekend next year.
I feel like this has to be a central part of the discussion. I’m at a private club as I hate scheduling and love flexibility but I still play a considerable amount of public between my non-member friends and traveling. I pay a lot extra every month to avoid the responsibility of securing a time.
I’m constantly amazed at the disparity of the online booking view vs what I see when I get to the course. The website will be telling me I’m lucky to get on as a single but the courses are never that full. I’ve seen enough of this book everything behavior to see a pattern.
My thesis is that its something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s always busy so we book everything we can get but its also always busy because multiple people are booking for multiple times.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had plenty of long muni rounds on full courses but they are less common than I would think. My market of Wichita KS has a good scene. The best city course is Auburn Hills and it stays full but Tex Consolver is less than 3 miles away and probably has times. A slightly longer drive (30 miles) gets you to Sand Creek Station which is criminally underbooked for a public course. Several other good examples in the area.
Add in that its probably not a golf professional handling the bookings at the city courses and you have a recipe for disaster. A privately owned public course would have more incentive and employees to make the golf efficient and in my experience they flow better.
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I’m sure @leftysauce and the other mid-state high cotton guys can ruminate on the state of public golf in one of the fastest growing major metros in the country.
Literally the best and most accessible courses are located over an hour away from the city.
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Is this also the thread we can discuss solutions? I do wonder if some barrier to entry is needed… certain times reserved for people with registered handicaps, playing licence like in Germany…obviously all my suggestions will include me in the okay group…
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Carts shut off when you’ve hit the USGA pace of play for the day. Give everyone incentive to keep the nuclear bomb from going off
This is of course based on the absolute fact that cart golf has ruined pace of play forever.
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Auction tee time slots and requiring 100% non-refundable payment at end of auction.
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Bethpage had to make some changes this year:
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Shrink The GameTM
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Not for me though!
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Safe to say if you’re on the Refuge than the STG movement doesn’t apply to you!
The southern Indiana tee time situation is not that bad. I have two that renew weekly, and I play twilight. Most times, if you call by Monday, you can play on Saturday.
If you want to do a show about poorly run golf courses, I can do the whole hour with you. In my town its not so much that the course is so busy, but the folks on the course don’t know what they’re doing.
I heard once that in some countries a player has to essentially get a license to play golf, proving that they have some ability, and knowledge of etiquette. Indiana needs that in the worst way.
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The Platzreife; you must complete an 18 hole round in 108 strokes or fewer accompanied by a PGA pro or representative, along with a 30 question test on ettiquite, rules, etc. Cost to complete is appx. $300
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Echoing some of what @brandonmanson said, Metro Detroit has the courses but also has the golf population to fill them all. We have three city courses which two of them pump people through. Through a phone call you can usually find you a tee time. Have 5 county courses which swallow up another large majority of golfers. Then throw in 30+ public tracks which range from $25 to $190, all depends and what you’re looking for. Then if you got the cash, 20+ CC’s will happily take your money for some of the best golf in the Midwest.
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The nicest public course in Charlotte got shut down by the investment company that owned the land/hotel/area in December of 2021… Ever since prices have skyrocketed.
Semi-related, but initiation fees in the area are at completely unsustainable levels now. Course I’ve been a member at for almost 30 years, very working class, low level private place, was ~$1,000-1,500 upfront pre covid is now $30k+ upfront. I know plenty of other private courses in the area are rapidly approaching $50,70k.
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Guess I should add. I worked at said public course as an assistant and eventually “head pro” towards the end. We had an historic year in 2021. Had literally never been more profitable. But, company had a long term vision blah blah blah. Not upset about losing the job because it got me out of the golf business, but Charlotte losing the only relatively good public course that was actually in Charlotte sucks.
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This take isn’t COVID related per se…but am I the only one who misses the days when GolfNow was the only/best way to get a tee time online? They had more Hot Deals and for many courses, the discount on the non-Hot Deals was enough that you were willing to pay their fees to book it. They had good filters and it was easy to scroll through and compare cost and quality making it so fast to find a good time and book it. Now that every course has a website with their own tee time booking engines, GolfNow is utterly useless. The Hot Deals are few and far between, and the rest of the tee times are exactly the same as you would find on the course website plus their $5 booking fees. And now if I want to compare multiple courses for cost/quality comps, I have to go to each course’s website and do a search there, making the process more difficult. Also, I’m less likely now to take a flyer on a new course because of how segmented the booking process is.
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But the Roost dues are too damn high.
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Oh hell yeah.
Currently writing my email to @KVV about Bergen County, New Jersey.
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God forbid life happens and you needed to adjust a GolfNow booking though, if you asked the course they punted you to the GN staff, which often was like 9a to 4p call center, great for evening before or morning of.
I also was gifted a GN certificate but for Hot Deals I could never use, they sent me a price to extend it that was about 75% of the gift value.
Take the platform filtering of times, prices and give to a competent management.
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