Article Says Real Reason for Slow Play is Short Tee Time Intervals

[Fourputt]

One thing I've generally observed from groups when there is a back up, large or small, is they do not actively try to eliminate it. I do not think they treat the first tee as they would the other 17 on the course. I've seen plenty of groups leave the putting green and arrive at the first tee right at their 11:00 AM tee time. Once they physically get on the tee box, each guy takes 4-10 practice swings because its the first tee and they want to make sure they are as loose as possible. Then they will look at each other for two minutes trying to decide on who will be the first to play, proceed to take "two off the first tee", run back to the cart to get that second ball, and finally after 7 minutes they are off. These things can add up without really being noticed by many.

Its another one of those may be they do not know, or may be they do not care situations, but just because the next group doesn't tee off for 8 minutes doesn't mean you have the tee box for 8 minutes. It means you have 8 minutes to play both your tee shot and approach shot in order to clear the fairway for the next group.

Players need to be taught that "ready golf" begins on the first tee.  On my former home course we paged the next group to the tee area when the group in front of them was up to hit.  As soon as a group left the tee box, the next group moved onto the teeing ground and started their first tee shenanigans, whether that was stretching, dry swinging, deciding on teams and wagers, picking their respective noses, or whatever.  When the starter said they were up, it was time to hit, and that's what they did.  No back ups allowed, no unreasonable delays - the first tee was no different from any other tee on the course.

[rkim291968]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkim291968

In Southern California, they have a course that opens early in the morning when it is pitch black dark.   When my brother showed up, starter handed the group "light" ball (the one that flashes on contact) to be collected later.   So, the group played in pitch dark with "light" balls (goes about 20 yards shorter, rolls funny) until the sun came up.   My brother was so pissed off at the practice, he didn't bother turn in those balls.

The picture I posted above is a course in Irvine that does exactly that.  (Although they said we could keep the glow balls.)  It's dumb.  Like I also said above, that course is a last last resort when everything else is booked and it's either there or don't play golf at all.

People joke about Top Flites or Pinnacles being "rocks" but these balls deserved that moniker.  The first (and thankfully only) drive I hit with that stupid thing felt like it was going to break my club.

Besides playing in the dark, wouldn't it be dangerous?    Courses have fog delays for safety reasons.   In the dark, carts can run into deep bunkers, pot holes, etc.    It's sad what biz people do to make a buck.

[Fourputt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Golfingdad

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkim291968

In Southern California, they have a course that opens early in the morning when it is pitch black dark.   When my brother showed up, starter handed the group "light" ball (the one that flashes on contact) to be collected later.   So, the group played in pitch dark with "light" balls (goes about 20 yards shorter, rolls funny) until the sun came up.   My brother was so pissed off at the practice, he didn't bother turn in those balls.

The picture I posted above is a course in Irvine that does exactly that.  (Although they said we could keep the glow balls.)  It's dumb.  Like I also said above, that course is a last last resort when everything else is booked and it's either there or don't play golf at all.

People joke about Top Flites or Pinnacles being "rocks" but these balls deserved that moniker.  The first (and thankfully only) drive I hit with that stupid thing felt like it was going to break my club.

Besides playing in the dark, wouldn't it be dangerous?    Courses have fog delays for safety reasons.   In the dark, carts can run into deep bunkers, pot holes, etc.    It's sad what biz people do to make a buck.

I think you are seeing problems where none exist.  A course I play holds a "Moonlight Tournament" each month in the summer, teeing off after dark and using glowballs.

On my home course, the greens and tee box mowers go out when it's still pitch dark, and the first tee time is a half hour later, still before the sun has cleared the horizon.  Never had a problem from that.

[caniac6]

We have water on 13 of 18 holes, deep, poorly constructed greenside bunkers, several hundred yards between greens and tees, and people playing from tees they have no buisness playing from. There are a ton of reasons for slow play.

[Lihu]

This article has not taken into account the personalities of the people playing on my courses lately.

[MrFlipper]

I think you are seeing problems where none exist.  A course I play holds a "Moonlight Tournament" each month in the summer, teeing off after dark and using glowballs.

On my home course, the greens and tee box mowers go out when it's still pitch dark, and the first tee time is a half hour later, still before the sun has cleared the horizon.  Never had a problem from that.

Playing the first hole or the last couple holes in the dark is no big deal, in fact good for your game---

This past Sunday the course was slow, got dark with 5 holes left and pitch black for last 2. I hadn't played in the dark for awhile, but it really attunes you to your swing, if you have no feel where it goes you don't find your ball. My golf buddy had never played in the dark before, hit his drive on the last hole, said it felt a little to the right and short, goes out there, finds it, hits to the green, said it felt short and found it again in a bunker. Without really seeing the ball or hole, he blasted out to ten feet and 2 putted.  This is a 15 handicapper who doesn't follow his ball well even in the light.

And he'd parred the par 3 before that. In the dark.

Of course it always doesn't go that well.

He was as giddy as a little kid.  Golf can do that sometimes, huh?

[Golfingdad]

Besides playing in the dark, wouldn't it be dangerous?    Courses have fog delays for safety reasons.   In the dark, carts can run into deep bunkers, pot holes, etc.

I suppose it certainly could be.  It is a flat course, though, so it would be hard to hurt yourself too badly, I would imagine.  Also, we're talking about maybe an hours worth of time where it's too dark to golf before sun up ... not the pitch black middle of the night.

It's sad what biz people do to make a buck.

Yes, but what makes it more sad is that people are actually willing to do it.  They're not booked solid all day, and this isn't Palm Springs in the summer where its too hot to play after 9am, so I can't imagine that they'd lose any business if they just started their tee times at sunrise.  (Currently their first time offered for the upcoming week is 5:45 and sunrise is a couple of minutes shy of 6:30)

But it is what it is.

[Dave2512]

It makes perfect sense to me.    It's the difficult par 3s and short par 4 which long players wait for green to clear for their t-shot are the worst offenders in my experience.

Pretty much have to wait for the green to clear on a par 3. Anyone that can realistically consider a lay up on a par 3 is playing to far back and that would be biggest factor in why they are slow.

But in general my experience is too many wait unnecessarily on longer holes due to wishful thinking. I play a few courses with par 4's in the 292-340 range and I see guys waiting on the tee. I think it's silly for all but the very skilled with sufficient distance. The guy taking 95 strokes to finish 18 holes is hitting more bad shots than good. The chance of hitting the perfect long drive are slim and these are the types I see waiting on short par 4's. It's the same type every time.

[RandallT]

I like simulations (in college, I did "Monte Carlo" computer simulations of thousands of baseball seasons to determine the long-term effect of various parameters...), so I thought this was interesting (caveat with models/simulations is of course: garbage in/garbage out, so careful):

http://iacis.org/iis/2003/TigerSpeersSimpsonSalzer.pdf (2003 study from Southeastern Oklahoma State University)

A key quote:

Short tee time intervals get more people through the course; however, the consequence is a congested course as shown by the long cycle times.

For this course, a 6-minute tee time, 220 rounds of golf are completed in a day; however, the round averages six hours!  [6 hour rounds, 220 rounds per day]

Moving to a 14-minute tee time drops the round length an hour-and-a-half; however, a reduction of 30 rounds occurs. [4.5 hour rounds, 190 rounds per day]

6-minute tee times!?! Yikes. Interesting they used that as the smallest interval.

Also, an interesting point is that golf course managers should analyze their courses for the bottlenecks and see if there are chokepoints. I'd imagine the modeling must be difficult to simulate specifics like that:

Identification of course bottlenecks, i.e., holes where play is severely congested, are shown in Figure 2. It shows that holes 6, 8, and 17 are bottleneck candidates. Referring to the input data, holes 8 and 17 are Par 3s which may provide insight to course managers and designers on improvement through better sequencing or management.

And not for the faint-hearted: take a look at this study (says draft November 2013)--> http://www.columbia.edu/~ww2040/Fu_Whitt_Golf_110613.pdf

I saw tons of formulas, but the charts weren't easily understandable. I'm still digging through what the summary is, but it remains elusive to me! They say:

"These models can be used to balance the competing objectives of having as many groups as possible play each day and keeping the expected times for those groups to play a full round as short as possible. They also can be used to examine the consequence of different tee-time schedules and the exceptional delays caused by lost balls and unusually slow groups."

But I can't find where their models do anything of the sort.

[Lihu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RandallT

I like simulations (in college, I did "Monte Carlo" computer simulations of thousands of baseball seasons to determine the long-term effect of various parameters...), so I thought this was interesting (caveat with models/simulations is of course: garbage in/garbage out , so careful):

And not for the faint-hearted: take a look at this study (says draft November 2013)--> http://www.columbia.edu/~ww2040/Fu_Whitt_Golf_110613.pdf

I saw tons of formulas, but the charts weren't easily understandable. I'm still digging through what the summary is, but it remains elusive to me! They say:

Is their basic model a par-4 hole, and they use some sort of estimation to expand the results to an 18 hole course? IDK if there is a direct transfer function that can model this, because the behavior of individuals vary on the par-3 and par-5 holes?

Short tee time intervals get more people through the course; however, the consequence is a congested course as shown by the long cycle times.

For this course, a 6-minute tee time, 220 rounds of golf are completed in a day; however, the round averages six hours!  [6 hour rounds, 220 rounds per day]

Moving to a 14-minute tee time drops the round length an hour-and-a-half; however, a reduction of 30 rounds occurs. [4.5 hour rounds, 190 rounds per day]

I think I know the decisions made by the courses will be to gain that extra 30 golfer's worth of income and let them wait. Longer course times also means more snacks and beverages will be purchased and consumed.

[phan52]

If a public course is still filling its tee sheet with 8 minute intervals and 4:45-5:00 hour rounds, they have no incentive to change. Private courses can make 10-11 minute intervals because, well, they just can. It doesn't cost them revenue and they have more persuasive means to enforce the pace of play (letters, suspensions, etc.).

[Dave2512]

Courses here have gone to not only tiered fee structures but varying intervals based on peak times.

[HanNL]

I like simulations (in college, I did "Monte Carlo" computer simulations of thousands of baseball seasons to determine the long-term effect of various parameters...), so I thought this was interesting (caveat with models/simulations is of course: garbage in/garbage out, so careful):

http://iacis.org/iis/2003/TigerSpeersSimpsonSalzer.pdf (2003 study from Southeastern Oklahoma State University)

A key quote:

6-minute tee times!?! Yikes. Interesting they used that as the smallest interval.

Also, an interesting point is that golf course managers should analyze their courses for the bottlenecks and see if there are chokepoints. I'd imagine the modeling must be difficult to simulate specifics like that:

And not for the faint-hearted: take a look at this study (says draft November 2013)-->http://www.columbia.edu/~ww2040/Fu_Whitt_Golf_110613.pdf

I saw tons of formulas, but the charts weren't easily understandable. I'm still digging through what the summary is, but it remains elusive to me! They say:

"These models can be used to balance the competing objectives of having as many groups as possible play each day and keeping the expected times for those groups to play a full round as short as possible. They also can be used to examine the consequence of different tee-time schedules and the exceptional delays caused by lost balls and unusually slow groups."

But I can't find where their models do anything of the sort.

I guess the Excel sheet I posted yesterday does exactly this, but in a (much) simpler format. I would say the modeling to a certain degree of reality would not be that complex. Identifying the bottleneck holes with a day or two of timing all flights on each hole, then try to adjust the tee-times to reflect good throughput on those holes.

Is their basic model a par-4 hole, and they use some sort of estimation to expand the results to an 18 hole course? IDK if there is a direct transfer function that can model this, because the behavior of individuals vary on the par-3 and par-5 holes?

I would say they did indeed use a basic par 4 as the basis. "For par 3 and 5 similar logic is needed, except par 3s have no fairway gate and par 5s can have two fairway gates. " This implies they have not actually done the modeling for par 3s and 5s.

[rkim291968]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkim291968

Quote:

Originally Posted by Golfingdad

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkim291968

In Southern California, they have a course that opens early in the morning when it is pitch black dark.   When my brother showed up, starter handed the group "light" ball (the one that flashes on contact) to be collected later.   So, the group played in pitch dark with "light" balls (goes about 20 yards shorter, rolls funny) until the sun came up.   My brother was so pissed off at the practice, he didn't bother turn in those balls.

The picture I posted above is a course in Irvine that does exactly that.  (Although they said we could keep the glow balls.)  It's dumb.  Like I also said above, that course is a last last resort when everything else is booked and it's either there or don't play golf at all.

People joke about Top Flites or Pinnacles being "rocks" but these balls deserved that moniker.  The first (and thankfully only) drive I hit with that stupid thing felt like it was going to break my club.

Besides playing in the dark, wouldn't it be dangerous?    Courses have fog delays for safety reasons.   In the dark, carts can run into deep bunkers, pot holes, etc.    It's sad what biz people do to make a buck.

I think you are seeing problems where none exist.  A course I play holds a "Moonlight Tournament" each month in the summer, teeing off after dark and using glowballs.

On my home course, the greens and tee box mowers go out when it's still pitch dark, and the first tee time is a half hour later, still before the sun has cleared the horizon.  Never had a problem from that.

If it is completely dark, it's hard to see a group in front.   But I think that can be fixed by the course distributing hard hats.  Tongue in cheek.

[ghalfaire]

If a course is packed, and that's what causes slow play… why would they change it?

They're selling as many spots as they can. That's why the course is packed, and why play is slow.

Know what I mean? Seems like kind of a catch-22. No course out there that's packed should increase times between tee times. Clearly the experience isn't preventing people from playing.

Courses that should do this are courses where people complain about pace of play when they're ALSO not selling out all their tee times.

I agree with this.  I wish I didn't because it says we are doomed to slow play if we continue to patronize coursed that are always crowded and SLOW.  Yet around here that are some really nice courses at reasonable prices, even in Winter, that I like to play but are always slow and crowded.  So my choice it to either play less maintained courses or more expensive courses or play slow.  I'll probably take the latter.

[Golfingdad]

If it is completely dark, it's hard to see a group in front.   But I think that can be fixed by the course distributing hard hats.  Tongue in cheek.

That was the only cool thing about the scenario in question:  It's really, REALLY easy to keep track of your ball and, for that matter, everybody's ball, in every group on the course, when it's dark and they are glowing.

[Lihu]

That was the only cool thing about the scenario in question:  It's really, REALLY easy to keep track of your ball and, for that matter, everybody's ball, in every group on the course, when it's dark and they are glowing.

It's funny you mention Glow-ball, I'm playing a par 3 this Saturday night with these things. Should be fun.

[Golfingdad]

It's funny you mention Glow-ball, I'm playing a par 3 this Saturday night with these things. Should be fun.

If they are the same type of balls I hit, then I think you are going to find that they are super rock hard and don't go as far as regular balls.  You're probably going to want to club up, although I'm not sure how much.  The driving distance was considerably shorter, irons probably are affected a bit less.  Good luck!