Are you the person who organizes all your buddies golf trips? Create Google Maps plotting out the stops and routes? Pay in advance for the tee times, and organize the “who owes who how much” after it’s over?
Do you have friends who simply show up and play without any input? Others who show up, don’t help organize at all but find plenty to complain about?
This thread is meant to be a space for us to:
a) Complain about our friends
b) Provide tips and tricks (the Google Maps one for me has been a lifesaver)
c) Share the best trips we created, etc.
Of course, it goes without saying that this group is sponsored by The TC Way and our spiritual guidance from the NLU crew is @Tron
I digress… I recently had the rights to a website domain for “GolfTripSherpa.com”. Was going to create a whole algorithm for helping trip planners find spots, make bookings, etc.
This was v2 of a site I created called “TheStarterShack” which I eventually traded for web design services (and a Haywood putter) from a company called “par6golf”.
Needless to say, once they got my domain, I never got the webdesign help (but I still have the putter!)
Here’s an example of my Wisconsin trip I took earlier this year. As you can see I went West, then worked my way back to Kohler, and just trying to plot it out - especially when we couldn’t book Erin Hills on the most logical date - made it easier for me to understand as well as share with the folks involved.
GolfTripSherpa seems to be expired if you are intrigued. I like this idea a lot. I changed jobs a few years ago and thought about trying to join a company like Hidden Links as a West Coast planner but then realized it wouldn’t pay enough or give me much latitude. But the idea of maybe doing that as a “retirement job” is appealing. I really like solving for this stuff and nailing down an itinerary.
All of this has been set to nuclear turbo levels with my 3-week Ireland trip this summer, of course. I have a Google Docs itinerary that is bordering on insanity.
“Hey if you guys want to book Bandon in 2024 we gotta make some decisions soon.”
“FUCK yeah we do, let’s do it”
“OK, what dates do we think work best, I propose blah blah blah so we have enough time to play all course and flying to yadda yadda yadda. What do you guys think?”
And this is after I did everything to get us on Sand Valley next summer. I had no energy to follow up or chase them down any further…
Yea, I terminated my contract to that domain with squarespace. I landed in the same spot that you are… where as a full time hobby or something I could put more time into it then it could be something. But right now between, work and shutting kids to/from sports… the last thing I want to do is sit in front of my pc any longer than I have to!
Is this basically the site @Fluff is a part of - “travelwithcaddie.com”??? Sorry Fluff… I should look more into this venture of yours
At this point, I try to organize around any obvious holidays or birthdays and give folks some chance to suggest other dates but I no longer break my back trying to wait for guys to tell me if they can make it. One guy almost bailed on us this year because it was “Parents Weekend” at Michigan, even though his daughter is a junior and she’d just spent the entire summer at home. I told him we weren’t changing the weekend and he relented and showed up.
Our 16 person event went to Bandon last year, so that got us off of a usually rotation of every October which we had done SV/Lawsonia and Arcadia/Forest Dunes.
We’re all jonesing to get the event planned again.
End up setting up two days at EH and two days at Lawsonia. We’re pumped. Send it out to the group. First reply:
“Hey sorry guys, i don’ think i can make it. it’s mother’s day.”
Well no shit!
Had to cancel the whole thing (all of us are married with kids)
My problem is finding the right balance of the large ryder cup trip/event with the more ambitious golf trips (cabot, UK, swetens even).
This is probably what I should be doing, but I don’t have the stones to just tell them the dates. I’m not sure the reaction would be entirely positive.
Our Ireland trip lands on a key birthday for a guy who I thought was shaky to come, and I’m glad I booked it then anyway because he’s not going to make the trip. I think the things you are trying to plan around make sense (though as you and your friends kids age, their birthdays will be less critical to worry about, thankfully.)
The best piece of advice I ever received about planning a golf trip was “a golf trip is a dictatorship, not a democracy”. If you spend too much time and effort pleasing everyone you’ll drive yourself mad.
Pick a date, ID the courses you want to play and go from there.
This is right. But a dictator can also have helpers - for instance, one of my buddies who barely cares about golf very much cares about nice restaurants, so I try to have him plan where we are going to eat - he totally gets into it, and he’s fully invested in the trip as a result. I give him the structure of the trip and then tell him to fire away.
All I want to do is have people commit. I have a whole Scotland trip planned for October of next year with a couple tee times already booked and I can’t get 3+ people to actually say yes!!
Yep. I plan for a group of eight. When I realized that I had to prepay for tee times in Ireland, I only booked one tee time, knowing I had at least one other guy committed and that worst case I could fill tee times from folks on this board who live in Ireland. As it was, I got four guys for the first week (actually five! Had to make some adjustments there) and mostly a new foursome for the second two weeks. Where we needed we just made tee times for three guys, knowing we can probably add the fourth if anyone steps up.
You can’t rely on guys to be proactive - when I first brought it up, they laughed about how far away it was, saying they couldn’t possibly commit. And then when I said it was going to be three weeks, they were stunned and couldn’t even entertain the idea. It took me proposing that they just commit to one week to get guys to figure it out. These are all some of the smartest people I know, but clearly that’s only applicable to certain things.
