Golfer Accountability & Booking Foursomes

Getting Back to Golf Basics

One of the best parts of the NGCOA Canada Conference is the Annual Idea Fair where courses of all kinds --big, small, private, public etc.-- can walk away with at least a few proven ideas that can fit into your business. In our experience, the easier something is to implement, the more likely we are to try it out. With that being said, over the next few pages we have put together a step by step process for holding golfers accountable to their booked tee times, and providing foursomes with advance booking during certain time frames.

Redwoods Testimonial

Traditionally, golf is a four person game. Over the last few years we have seen an increasing amount of golfers straying from that ideal golf scenario and becoming content playing in twosomes or threesomes without even trying to find a fourth player. Too often we have seen golfers book a foursome but show up only as two or three players without providing any notice, which is essentially lost revenue.

To help lower these losses and instead turn them into gains, we started doing two simple things: holding golfers accountable to the number of players they booked and providing foursomes with advance booking during certain times of the day. Combined, these earned us over $26,000 in revenue in a four month span from June to September of 2020. As an added benefit of having mostly foursomes play in prime tee times, we were able to significantly reduce pace of play issues on the course as we experienced very minimal days where our pace of play exceeded our optimal pace. We are aware that the COVID-19 pandemic put a lot of demand on the golf industry which definitely aided in the implementation and overall acceptance of these policies, but overall they were well received and helped us to fill our tee sheet with golfers who were committed to playing and would actually show up to their tee times.

The protocols that we have developed over the last two years are actually quite simple and primarily require small changes which can be easily executed by golf facilities large or small. These protocols involve small changes to communication and minor adjustments to policies that a golf facility likely already has in place; they do not require extra staffing, an increased number of refunds, or steep learning curves.

Holding golfers accountable to their reservations and giving priority booking to foursomes is not necessarily a riveting concept but by moving back to golf basics we all can continue to increase our revenues and save our facilities from preventable losses each year while maintaining a fantastic pace of play. In the following pages you will see a breakdown of how golf facilities, large or small, can implement these tried and true protocols and policies. 

Downloads of Redwoods policy wording, email templates, and a guide to the back end of the Club Prophet Systems online booking module is available on the last page.

Next Page: Holding Golfers Accountable