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

[rkim291968]

My home course was rented out for tournament this Saturday.   Needing to satisfy my golf addiction, I looked for a course I haven't played before and landed on Crystal Springs golf club's (near SF, CA) web page b/c Costco offered golf certificates for it at reasonable price.  I  was all ready to buy the certificate until I saw their tee times.   They are 7 minutes apart.   Hmm.   I didn't have a good experience being a former member of a golf club that had 8 minute tee time interval.   On Saturday, things come to a screeching hole on almost every hole.   This one has 7 minute internal.  So, I checked out the reviews and sure enough, the reviews are full of golfers complaining about their pace (6+ hours).    After reading the reviews, I gave up buying the certificates.

Tell us your experience of playing a "7 minute tee time interval" golf course.   What is the shortest tee time intervals you have seen?   What was it like?

(  IMO, the club owners in big city offering 7 minute tee time interval on busy weekend should be arrested and sent to fight against ISIS as their punishment.  )

[JaxBomber17]

I played a course with 8-minute intervals and a full sheet yesterday and it wasn't awful. Finished 18 in just over 4, albeit with a twosome in front of us, and that was with a very new player with us. We only lost the twosome once, on 15. Picked them back up on 17 tee. That didn't stop the four little old ladies behind us (who were in four separate carts and at times hitting simultaneously) from hitting into us four times.

[Big C]

7 minutes is too close together, IMO. Your experience does not surprise me. The course I play most often spaces times out 8 minutes apart and the pace is generally reasonable. Although it's crude math, 8 minute spacing assumes about 16 minutes to complete a hole, for a pace of approximately 4:45.

10 minute spacing is generally reserved for private clubs or extremely high end courses, where you are paying for the privilege of never having to wait.

[Clambake]

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.

[rkim291968]

I played a course with 8-minute intervals and a full sheet yesterday and it wasn't awful. Finished 18 in just over 4, albeit with a twosome in front of us, and that was with a very new player with us. We only lost the twosome once, on 15. Picked them back up on 17 tee. That didn't stop the four little old ladies behind us (who were in four separate carts and at times hitting simultaneously) from hitting into us four times.

My old home course on Saturday with 8 min interval is packed with 4-somes back to back to back to back ... you get the idea.  This being a cheap muni course, it attracts a lot of beginners, walkers, walk-ons, ....   There are no starters after 1:00 pm and no marshals hardly make a round.   I.e, the course is not managed well and not all golfers can't self regulate their pace.

7 minute interval course I was interested in playing can't be any better than my said old home course.   I can understand why number of reviewers mentioned having 6+ hour round and gave one star rating.

[kpaulhus]

My country club has 10 minute intervals. Rarely do I have to wait and if I run into a groups when I'm playing as a single or twosome they always let me through. The typical round at my course is 3:40 for a foursome.

[No Mulligans]

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...

[Shindig]

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.

"Used to"? It still is. Six minutes apart at Rancho Park, among others. There are some courses I love in the city, but man, six minutes apart is a killer. Keep in mind that the city views "groups off the first tee" as their objective to maximize, because this nets them the fees. There's a reason (actually, many) that I like to head east during the summer, when the L.A. courses are seemingly more packed and the desert courses are abandoned for some reason.

[meenman]

Mind you that I play at a private club, but we tee off at 7.5 minute intervals. With tee times off the front and back from 7:30 to 9:22, there is very little waiting on your front 9 (be it front or back) and a minimal amount of waiting on the back (or at the turn if you finish your front in under 1:45.)

I have played clubs with 10 minute intervals and never saw a group in front or in back of me all round.

The local public course I played years ago also did the 7.5 minute tee time thing. With tee times starting at 7:15, you were fine if you teed off before 8:15. From there, it often got so bad that you would tee off an hour late.

As a newbie, my first rounds were played in the afternoon because everyone suggested that I would slow the course down in the morning. After two 6 hour rounds of waiting teeing off after noon at that course, i decided that I would be much better off playing mornings.

[Jeremie Boop]

I've never played a course that had 7-8 minute tee times that wasn't backed up and slow. Typically the round takes 5-7 hours when they are booked that close together around here. That's why I don't play mornings. I usually between 1-3 pm because a few courses around here let you play unlimited golf with a cart for the price of 18 and a cart on the weekends after 1-3 depending on the course. When I do that the first 9-18 is usually pretty decently fast because I catch the tail end of the morning groups and any golfing after that is usually just about wide open. I easily get in 45+ holes.

[tefunk]

I bought a season pass at a course right out of college... It was $450 for unlimited play, and apparently they were only selling 100 of these passes to quickly raise money for rehab project. Turns out, they sold almost 300 of them (I saw the "member list" in the pro shop one morning). Not only did they lie about how many they were selling, they stacked up tee times 6 minutes apart. You could plan on 5-6 hour rounds every outing, it was terrible. After about a month, it became common practice to show up after your tee time because you'd be waiting a good 40 minutes after your tee time if you weren't in the first half dozen groups out for the day. The pro shop would flip out in you for showing up just on time or barely after, and then you'd have to argue with them that you're still 6th on deck even though you're late. The thing is, it was a nice course... Challenging, well maintained, etc. Just terribly run

[Strandly]

Wow I've never seen a place that ran faster than 12 minutes apart.

[DrvFrShow]

Foursomes of "Little old ladies" like to play 3 hr rounds.

[rkim291968]

My country club has 10 minute intervals. Rarely do I have to wait and if I run into a groups when I'm playing as a single or twosome they always let me through. The typical round at my course is 3:40 for a foursome.

It makes a difference if course is packed with 4-somes or not.  My current home course sends player out every 10 minutes.   On Saturdays, course is packed with 4-somes and it takes 4.5 - 5 hours with marshals actively nudging slow groups along.   On Sunday when it's not packed, it's usually 3.5 - 4 hours, sometimes longer.

I bought a season pass at a course right out of college... It was $450 for unlimited play, and apparently they were only selling 100 of these passes to quickly raise money for rehab project.

Turns out, they sold almost 300 of them (I saw the "member list" in the pro shop one morning). Not only did they lie about how many they were selling, they stacked up tee times 6 minutes apart. You could plan on 5-6 hour rounds every outing, it was terrible.

After about a month, it became common practice to show up after your tee time because you'd be waiting a good 40 minutes after your tee time if you weren't in the first half dozen groups out for the day. The pro shop would flip out in you for showing up just on time or barely after, and then you'd have to argue with them that you're still 6th on deck even though you're late.

The thing is, it was a nice course... Challenging, well maintained, etc. Just terribly run

That's one of the saddest golf stories I read ...

[MrDC]

I have no idea about the intervals here honestly, but seven minutes seems a bit fast, I would think the course would get backed up very quickly, but at public courses I'm not so sure they really care, it's all about getting those dollars and letting the course run itself IMO, because how often do you see rangers out there trying to stop slow play? never. So they'll push through as many as they can off the tee, seven minutes it probably as fast as they can go.

[Yukari]

Generally, IMHO, anything less than 9 minutes between tee times is waiting for a crawl on packed days.

I've played in some of those Southern Cal. courses with 6 or even 7 minute intervals, and they have ALWAYS been a disaster - unless you are the lucky few to be out early.  When I arrived at 10 AM tee time during one summer, they were already 45 minutes behind!!!

Fossil Trace in Golden, CO has 10 minute interval tee times, and that seems to work well, unless of course you got a slow player in front somewhere.  But generally, it flows at a decent pace except peak hours during weekends where you have every beginners (it seems) out on the course.

Even 9 minute tee time intervals can get slow if you have a slow player AND the "marshall" doesn't do anything about it.

Key in most cases seems to be marshall that is unwilling or afraid to tell slower groups to pickup.

[Jeremie Boop]

Funny enough, I actually played a course today with 7 minute tee times. Even with it being busy I still got 18 done in 3 1/3 hours. I think it was because it was middle of the week at 10 am and everyone on the course were regulars so they moved along quite well. All but 2 that I saw were seniors, getting it done at a brisk pace, I was impressed.

[Mac62]

Generally, IMHO, anything less than 9 minutes between tee times is waiting for a crawl on packed days.

I've played in some of those Southern Cal. courses with 6 or even 7 minute intervals, and they have ALWAYS been a disaster - unless you are the lucky few to be out early.  When I arrived at 10 AM tee time during one summer, they were already 45 minutes behind!!!...

That's one of the (many) things I don't miss about Southern California.  We teed off at 10:30 today on my home course and never saw another golfer until we headed to the 18th tee and crossed paths with a twosome on the 9th green.  The pro shop manager said they were the only two left on the course. That may or may not have had to do with the fact that it was 96F when we teed off and 102F in the late afternoon. Unlike many places where summer is the prime season, summer is the least crowded season for golf here.  The snowbirds have gone back home to the northern states and Canada, the temps here are 100+ F and not many people will go out and play in that weather.

As to the OP, my home course has 12 minute tee times and it still gets backed up during prime season.  We're usually right on time (or maybe even a bit early) off the tees, but it slows down once you're out on the course.  A lot of our snowbirds are senior citizens, and a lot of them aren't very fast golfers (besides the fact that most of them have apparently never heard of raking a bunker or fixing a ball mark, but that's another subject!), so it's usually at least a 4 to 4 1/2 hour round.  It's a semi-private course and the members don't hesitate to let the pro shop know if somebody is dragging their feet - and a marshal will usually be sent out immediately to fix the situation, so it doesn't usually get too bad.

One of the other courses nearby has 7 minute tee times and is packed to the brim all winter long, and on that course you can usually expect a minimum 5 1/2 to 6 hour round.  We won't even go near it during snowbird season (about November - April).  It's a county-owned course and has the lowest green fees in the area, so it's difficult to get a tee time during those months even if you don't have anything better to do than sit around and wait for the next six hours.