Golf Random Irritations

Nooooooooo! A hanging offence to my mind. Let’s not go the way of America … this is just one step away from “mashed potato” for goodness sake!
 

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Nooooooooo! A hanging offence to my mind. Let’s not go the way of America … this is just one step away from “mashed potato” for goodness sake!
Everything goes the way of America. Sooooo many things. Every bad habit the Brits complain about......eventually get taken up here.
 
Really not looking forward to the free availability of assault rifles.
I grew up with a few guns in my bedroom. 30-30, assorted .22's, couple of shot guns....I turned out alright..twitch..twitch..ack. My uncle gave me a really nice semi-automatic .22 at one point....and then obviously had a second thought about how stupid that was and replaced it with a very nice accurate single shot. Jeez you could pump out a lot of bullets with the semi. My uncle was a smart guy.
 
It is simple economics and controlling customer levels by price. You keep upping the price until you are only attracting the number of type of customer you want. I suspect to many that play the highest price courses, a few hundred quid is the change they find down the back of the sofa.
I think you are right. One major factor is that a lot of clubs are now full and members want to play. Hence, the slots for visitors are fewer and they can charge a premium if you want a slot. Unfortunately, things are getting worse with initiatives such as iGolf, golf tours and course closures.

There are definitely some tiers appearing where a lot of clubs (say in the GM Top 100) will be out of reach for many golfers.
 
...and club can use price to manage demand. Pre covid my home club was getting too many visitors at £35, do put it up to £55 to stiffle demand. It wasn't about "type" it was about numbers. It worked.

There are plenty of clubs charging North of £140 and they sell all the times they want.
 
Surely you can limit demand in a variety of ways, at its simplest not allowing visitors at all, like about a third of US Country clubs, where it is member‘s guest only. Or have them just on certain days or you can restrict visitors via online booking to certain slots and once they’re full that’s it.
It is entirely up to the club as to when and how many visitors they want to accept. The price for unaccompanied visitors is what people will pay to fill the amount of slots you allow/want - not a demand management tool.
 
Surely you can limit demand in a variety of ways, at its simplest not allowing visitors at all, like about a third of US Country clubs, where it is member‘s guest only. Or have them just on certain days or you can restrict visitors via online booking to certain slots and once they’re full that’s it.
It is entirely up to the club as to when and how many visitors they want to accept. The price for unaccompanied visitors is what people will pay to fill the amount of slots you allow/want - not a demand management tool.
There are a few in the UK that do this and are usually well subscribed. Some go the route of using a share owner type system but with few exceptions these fail when the club gets into financial trouble. Some many members clubs want to revenue to keep the membership fees down but don't want to hack off the members if they can't get on the course.

Lots of restrictions on times, days, etc but you are correct - it's a difficult trade-off.
 
Playing yesterday in our Sat rollup, one of the guys moaned continuously about this that and the other relating to work done or being done on the course, and he moaned from before we teed off until we shook hands. Yes I have questions and concerns as well as things I think are great. But pleeeazzzz…
 
Nice day on Saturday, but had arranged a gravel ride. Due to play in the Tain medal on Sunday, que heavy frost so no golf. nice again today when im at work
 
Irritating that my wife ordained that we would be Christmas shopping on my regular golf day today but fortunately it rained most of the day anyway, result!
 
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