7 minute tee time interval, really? Can weekend golfers in big city play that fast?

[Lefty-Golfer]

My club runs 8 minute times and there is seldom an issue, 4 hour rounds are pretty standard on a full course, 415 on slow day. I find the spring time rough when you can hardly find a ball 5' off the fairway is the big issue in pace of play.

[RandallT]

I've written an extremely detailed spreadsheet that models golf course flow. It's a totally geeky thing that I did for fun. I'll post later in an "OT/Spoiler" section the details how it works, but I've only got a few minutes right now.

In the chart above, "SS" is SuperSlow, "S" is Slow, "N" is Normal, "F" is Fast, "FF" is SuperFast.  I can adjust the percents of each type of player and Normal players play at about 4 hours pace at 10 minute tee intervals.  SuperSlow's play at 5 hours, and SuperFasts' play at about 3 hours or so. I chose predominantly Normal players (70%) and with 10% empty slots.  The spreadsheet models how they play each shot, search for lost balls, walk down the fairway, walk to the next hole, etc.  It uses a random generator to do each task and nobody moves on until the group ahead is clear. Like I said, totally geeky.

When you reduce tee times to 7 minutes, you gain some revenue (I assumed costs for 18 holes and 9 holes on the right), but you add waits to the players. As the day goes on, the waits get worse and worse if the tee times are too bunched. Here is the 7 minute tee time profile:

Contrast that to the 10-minute tee time profile:

But the golf course makes $2500 extra for the 7-minute tee times relative to the 10-minute tee intervals. The rounds are nearly an hour slower per person though. Is that worth it?

[rkim291968]

But the golf course makes $2500 extra for the 7-minute tee times relative to the 10-minute tee intervals. The rounds are nearly an hour slower per person though. Is that worth it?

Awesome chart, RandalIIT.

It isn't worth it IMO and here are my guesses as to why.   With Yelp and other review sites, the slow round reputation will spread through local golf community.   They will avoid the course (like I just did after reading the reviews).   The course has to respond by lowering the price of green fee to attract more golfers.   I am guessing that what the course may gain in number of golfers playing the course, they will lose in total revenue (deep discount via Costco golf certificate).  And those who played on a packed weekend by mistake will not likely to return.

[RandallT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RandallT

But the golf course makes $2500 extra for the 7-minute tee times relative to the 10-minute tee intervals. The rounds are nearly an hour slower per person though. Is that worth it?

Awesome chart, RandalIIT.

It isn't worth it IMO and here are my guesses as to why.   With Yelp and other review sites, the slow round reputation will spread through local golf community.   They will avoid the course (like I just did after reading the reviews).   The course has to respond by lowering the price of green fee to attract more golfers.   I am guessing that what the course may gain in number of golfers playing the course, they will lose in total revenue (deep discount via Costco golf certificate).  And those who played on a packed weekend by mistake will not likely to return.

Yah, I agree- long term, I don't see much benefit to the slight increase in revenue. If the model is close (and no guarantees I've done it right!), the people late in the day really suffer the most. They'll be so angry that they won't want to come back.

Before writing off that course though, take a look at the early tee times. It seems they fare almost as well on the 7-minute course as the 10-minute course.  If you get out in the first two hours of opening, you should be good to go.

That's partly why I wanted to create the spreadsheet. I wondered how it all backs up theoretically (even with the same profile players- with the only variable being tee time interval). You can drill down to any hole on the spreadsheet and see the times of every group and see what everyone on the course is doing. See who is waiting where and tabulate it all.

As is intuitive, it just takes one slow guy somewhere to create havoc that takes hours to recover from. When I put in 1% super slow players and 99% super fast players, the results are comical.  Kind of like that one accident on a highway on an otherwise light traffic day.

[rkim291968]

Before writing off that course though, take a look at the early tee times. It seems they fare almost as well on the 7-minute course as the 10-minute course.  If you get out in the first two hours of opening, you should be good to go.

Here's the rub.  Between Fri - Sun, I have to pay $20 more per person to play before 12:00 pm per the certificate condition.   So, $30 per round + $20 premium to play with less delay ....

[RandallT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RandallT

Before writing off that course though, take a look at the early tee times. It seems they fare almost as well on the 7-minute course as the 10-minute course.  If you get out in the first two hours of opening, you should be good to go.

Here's the rub.  Between Fri - Sun, I have to pay $20 more per person to play before 12:00 pm per the certificate condition.   So, $30 per round + $20 premium to play with less delay ....

Gotcha!  I wouldn't want to touch the afternoon rounds. Starting at 12pm, I don't see how reasonably fast players can get through in under 5 hours (by that chart). Late in the day, it's 5 1/2 hours easily. And that's with guys who typically finish in 4!

Seems a lot of work for that course to have promotions and incentives to play in the afternoons to bring back customers that they probably drove away by having the 7-minute tee interval.

For those in this thread who have said that 7-minute intervals work out fine at their course, can you confirm the time of day you typically play? Is there a chance you are used to morning tee times (when it's really not too bad).  Do you know if the afternoon tee times are backed up typically?  My assumption in the spreadsheet were players who typically play in 4 hours in foursomes, and even those guys can't finish in under 5 hours after about noon when the tees are reduced to 7-minutes.   Perhaps your courses aren't 90% full like this spreadsheet assumed?  I figure it must be: your course is less full than I've assumed, or your players are typically faster than I've assumed.  But the numbers are the numbers.

[Fourputt]

Los Angeles city courses used to run on 6 minute spacing, and it was a disaster.  Typically, if you had a tee time around 8:30am they were already 30 minutes behind, and then after starting so late you had the fun of a 5 to 5 1/2 hour round.

This is the real issue with squeezing tee times too close together.  If you can't even keep players moving off the first tee on time, then there is no possible way to keep the flow moving on the course.  My former home course pushes it about as close as I think is reasonable by starting out the day with staggered times, 8 and 9 minutes, from open until 10:30.  From there out it's 9 minutes for all tee times.  No first tee back up is allowed.  Groups go off on time, or within a minute or two of that, and if they are late, they miss out.  As a starter, I would juggle groups if possible, sending the 8:30 group out at 8:21 to give the tardy 8:21 group a chance to get ready, but that only worked if the 8:30 was ready.  If not then 8:21 would go short handed and the tardy player would have to catch up on the 2nd hole.  If a group fell behind on #1, the ranger was called and the group was "accelerated".

It typically took no more than 7 minutes to play four tee shots, get to the balls and play four approach shots to clear the driving area.  Usually players would be approaching or on the green by the time the next group teed off.  That was enough to give a slight cushion between groups at the start.  Holes still might back up a little on some par 5 or par 3 holes, but usually the flow was relatively steady, and resulted in a typical 4:20 to 4:30 round when the course was busy.  Not great, but not unacceptable either.

[MyrtleBeachGolf]

Almost every course here in MB have 8 minute tee-time intervals. And almost every round takes 5 hours.

[RandallT]

Help me with the logic here...

It seems to me that a fully scheduled course is only going to proceed at the pace of the slowest players who tee'd off earlier in the day.  If that's the case wouldn't the too tightly scheduled tee times only affect how soon you got off on the first tee.  You'd have to wait on the first tee and maybe again the first par three and then things would just proceed at the pace of the slowest group ahead.

So roughly, if the actual pace between groups was 10 minutes but they scheduled every 7 minutes and you were the 10th group... then, wouldn't you just end up starting 30 minutes late and then proceed at a pace of the slowest previous group?  Isn't the real problem the slow groups up ahead?

However if the pace was again every 10 minutes but they scheduled tee times every 12 minutes there would be some 'breathing room' for the course to improve it's pace as the slow groups made their way through.  So the only way to fix it would be to extend the tee times to the point where the course is not quite full.

Seems to me, but maybe I'm wrong...

Yah, this is exactly why I got curious about how things work as you add more players to a course. After generating a model as detailed as I could think of and then watching different scenarios play out, here are some things I've learned (I probably could've just thought about it more and learned the same thing!):

1. Slow groups v. tee time intervals of 7 minutes

Your bolded lines above make perfect sense to me. We all love to hate that one group that slows everyone down, because everyone else is limited by them. The more buffer there is with tee time intervals, the fewer groups behind are slowed. But the course needs to maximize revenue, of course. I think most get that, but here's a bit more I learned with my simulations:

It takes 7 minutes for a reasonable group to play an approach (2 min), travel to the green and play short game shots (2/3min), and putt out (2/3min). So when a slow group clears off the green to finish its 5hr 30min round, the "faster" group behind it is sitting at 5hr 23min for its round, but it still must complete the final hole (which takes 7 minutes!).   THERE IS NO WAY TO REDUCE THE AVERAGE TIME as the day goes by, unless people finish that 18th approach and putt out in less than 7 minutes (the tee interval).

When the tee interval is 8 minutes or more, then each group can bring the average time back down bit by bit, incrementally over time, after a slow group does its damage. The tee interval should be greater than the time it takes to approach the 18th and putt out , or the round average times simply go higher and higher.

2. All fast groups (nobody is "slow") v. tee time intervals of 7 minutes

Now let's imagine there are no slowpokes. Let's say all cars on a highway are going 60mph, but they are all spaced only 10 feet apart.  As long as all cars stay constant speed, no problem.  But of course, over a long trip, somebody somewhere will tap the brakes or lose speed by just a bit.  When things are packed tightly, any slowdown must be felt by everyone behind it.  The tighter the cars, the more the impact. The more space between cars, the less the impact. Of course, the space between cars is analogous to tee time intervals.

Now let's assume all groups are playing at the equivalent of "4-hour" rounds. During that round, there are inevitable holes where we all end up in a bunker and one guy skulls it across the green or whatever.  Just like in the highway situation, for 7-minute intervals, that impact is felt right away for the group behind. All slowdowns for all groups impact the group behind it, so the effect is cumulative on each hole. So nobody can really achieve the 4-hour round because there is no buffer like there "normally" would be with more spacing.

From my models, the first groups of the day can stay close to those 4-hour rounds, but the delays accumulate and ultimately reach 5hr, 20min rounds for players who typically finish in 4.  Just due to the compressed tee times and natural variability of slow holes for golfers. No spacing between groups is a bitch.

And the last thing I can think to mention is:

3. Each hole is its own "system"

Every hole is its own little system, with its own characteristics of how it plays. Every course has its own profile of players. Modeling makes a TON of assumptions, so you just take it all with a grain of salt. Some people say their experience is one thing, while others have different experiences, but it is up to the manager of the course to know their course and their profile of players to decide the best options.

Therefore, if a course in LA wants to have 6-minute tee times, they better make the first hole a wide open fairway with few bunkers and an easy pin placement. If you can avoid any slowness on 1, you can get your groups off pretty quickly- so make the hole easy! No ball searches- no crazy putting. Sure they'll stack up and wait on subsequent holes, but they'll get your money because those backups won't affect the first hole waits!

Here's the problem though with 6 minutes: for a round that takes 4 hours, my models show that it will take you about 6.5 minutes ON AVERAGE to clear the 1st fairway so the group behind can hit. That's average. It's not uncommon to have groups take longer or shorter.  There are obviously times when it takes 7 or 8 minutes by the models, given expected variability, so tee times 6-minute tee times are NUTS, unless that first hole is very straightforward. Delays on the tee are virtually guaranteed!

This is the real issue with squeezing tee times too close together.  If you can't even keep players moving off the first tee on time, then there is no possible way to keep the flow moving on the course.  My former home course pushes it about as close as I think is reasonable by starting out the day with staggered times, 8 and 9 minutes, from open until 10:30.  From there out it's 9 minutes for all tee times.  No first tee back up is allowed.  Groups go off on time, or within a minute or two of that, and if they are late, they miss out.  As a starter, I would juggle groups if possible, sending the 8:30 group out at 8:21 to give the tardy 8:21 group a chance to get ready, but that only worked if the 8:30 was ready.  If not then 8:21 would go short handed and the tardy player would have to catch up on the 2nd hole.  If a group fell behind on #1, the ranger was called and the group was "accelerated".

It typically took no more than 7 minutes to play four tee shots, get to the balls and play four approach shots to clear the driving area.  Usually players would be approaching or on the green by the time the next group teed off.  That was enough to give a slight cushion between groups at the start.  Holes still might back up a little on some par 5 or par 3 holes, but usually the flow was relatively steady, and resulted in a typical 4:20 to 4:30 round when the course was busy.  Not great, but not unacceptable either.

I think the tee time plan there is smart. Short tee times are ok for a few hours, but it's the long term effect that eventually does it in. By adjusting at 10:30, you likely are staving off problems on a busy course.  Bottom line, it's likely an art rather than a science and the starter must be attuned to how the holes are playing and the community it is serving.

Your number of "7 minutes" in bold is very close to what I "tuned" my simulations toward, and that works very well for what I've seen on typical courses here. Good to see that's what happens in real life.

[Shindig]

I had a random thought occur to me. Someone in my club speculated a while ago to me that the further along in the course the first par-3 is, the less of a problem groups with similar times is. I don't remember who said it, so I can't give credit or blame if it's right or wrong. Has anyone heard of anything like this, and if so, what are your thoughts on it?

[RandallT]

I had a random thought occur to me. Someone in my club speculated a while ago to me that the further along in the course the first par-3 is, the less of a problem groups with similar times is. I don't remember who said it, so I can't give credit or blame if it's right or wrong.

Has anyone heard of anything like this, and if so, what are your thoughts on it?

I've heard that too! I did a ton of google searches on "tee time model", "golf course flow simulation", etc... and read tons of scholarly papers on the subject prior to writing my own. In one of them, they mentioned the idea that Par 3 holes are detrimental to getting players off the tee efficiently. I don't recall their reasoning, but it didn't quite sit right with me. I'll get to your specific question first, however:

You said that the further along in the course the first Par 3 is, the better.  I disagree. I'm no expert, but here is my thought and please tell me if I'm full of crap.  I just do not see any possibility that the 2nd hole backup can impact the 1st hole. And certainly not the 3rd hole or 4th hole.  If you have 20 carts lined up on the tee for the 2nd hole, the first hole will play just fine.  Right?

I think I recall times when I finish a hole (and it seemed normal), then we drive the cart around a corner and find a few groups stacked up on a par 3.  The dreaded Par 3 backup. Kills you every time. I'm willing to admit I'm wrong though.

But as to why it is bad for a Par 3 to be the lead-off hole, my idea is this:

The green is typically the slowest part of a hole (relative to tee or fairway), and Par 3's tend to be designed tougher around the green.

To avoid a hole backing up, the people must exit the hole (finish up on the green and depart) as fast as they enter (tee off and chase their ball).  So you can't have tee time intervals faster than people are exiting a hole- any hole (whatever the par is).

If a typical Par 4 and 5 holes have exit rates of 1 group every 7 minutes, a Par 3 might have an exit rate of 1 group every 7.5 minutes (just guesses), just because of tougher bunkers or pin placements. With the slower exit rate of the hole, you can't let people start the hole as frequently, or a backup occurs.

The best holes to open a course with are the easy holes with fast exit rates, just to get people off and running. Let the backups occur on the course later.

[Fourputt]

I had a random thought occur to me. Someone in my club speculated a while ago to me that the further along in the course the first par-3 is, the less of a problem groups with similar times is. I don't remember who said it, so I can't give credit or blame if it's right or wrong.

Has anyone heard of anything like this, and if so, what are your thoughts on it?

This is true for both par 3 and par 5 holes, or even a possibly driveable par 4.  However, you can only postpone the inevitable for so long.  My former home course had the first par 5 as the 2nd hole (reachable in 2 for some players - however, many who had no chance to reach still waited for the green to clear) and the first par 3 at #4.  At times, both holes would back up for about a 2-3 minute wait on the tee - I've seen 2 groups backed up on #4 during the busiest times.

The potential back up holes have to begin somewhere, and for courses which depend on regular play for daily fee income, they don't have the luxury of extending tee times out to at least 10 minutes, which seems to be the starting point for preventing such delays.  Any course that drops below 8 minutes is just fantasizing.  They are trying to live in an ideal world which simply doesn't exist.