Page 13 - GBC English Winter 2022

“OK, time for a little math. Let us now imagine that the group in front of us teed off at eight in the morning, finished at noon and therefore took exactly
four hours to play their eighteen. In our scenario, your group finished eleven minutes after the group in front so therefore, you walk off the final green at eleven past noon. So, how long did your group take to play?”
stool for pace. It seems to be helpful in remembering the key takeaways and the facts needed to improve pace of play at your facility. The first and most important leg of the stool is this:
We must set a tee-interval that is similar to, but slightly less than, the average finishing interval between groups to optimize both the pace experience and revenue.
Next, think back to our scenario with the group in front of us. This time, imagine that instead of taking a tidy four hours to play, the group in front spent all day looking for lost balls, taking bathroom breaks before teeing off instead of after, and parking the cart on the wrong side of the green every other hole, leading to them taking a frustrating 4.5 hours to finish their round. Your group still finishes eleven minutes after them because it is still the same golf hole, and you tee off eight minutes after them because the course has not yet adopted the best practices from this article. So, your round takes four hours and thirty-three minutes, and that process repeats itself with the groups that follow.
The lesson here is that the pace of one group on a busy course, affects each group after it. Yes, I know there is “playing through” but in our experience, if you have groups playing through other groups on your course, you are not doing your job in applying a good pace policy. This makes the pace of play of early groups critical to good pace throughout a busy Saturday.
TRUTH#2:YOUSHOULDSETAGGRESSIVEPACEFOREARLYGROUPS
Now that you have set accurate tee-time intervals for your golfers, we can move on the next fact that is essential for improving pace of play. The second leg of our pace stool is:
The pace expectations for early groups should be more aggressive than the average pace we expect for the full-day, and it should be clearly communicated and enforced with those early golfers.
We have seen large multi-course operators and small independent courses provide incentives to early groups to finish in a timely fashion,
such as a few dollars off their next round or a free appetizer at the nineteenth hole. We have also seen examples where the early rounds are marketed as being short, which communicates the course’s expectations to the golfers, including when they check-in and with the marshals on the course.
As golf course operators, we have set up our golfers for success by having good pace from the early groups and a tee time interval that reflects the realistic ability of our golfers, on our course, to keep up with the group in front.
Returning to our math, if instead of our groups taking eleven minutes to clear the green after the group in front, they are taking fifteen, twenty, or even longer, the result is increasing round times for them, and every group that follows. On the surface, that sounds like a problem with the golfers. However, I would argue that unless you, as the operator, are clearly communicating your expectations, providing timely information to your golfers about being out of position, and enforcing that expectation, we are failing all the other customers on the course, and failing our own businesses.
TRUTH #3: YOU MUST COMMUNICATE AND ENFORCE YOUR POLICY
Now that you have established accurate tee-time intervals and set an aggressive pace of play for your early golfers, we can move on to the final fact that is necessary to consider when addressing issues with pace of play. The third leg of our pace stool is:
We must communicate early and often with our golfers and be prepared to enforce a policy of being in position behind the group in front of you.
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