Killing rollups has hurt golf

The tee times at our club aren't booked on Saturday mornings and it is better for it. I play in a rollup group that can be between 10 and 20 each week, and if we had to book tee times, we could be playing at various different times, rather than queuing together. It would result in most leaving, especially when several of us watch football in the afternoon so need to tee off by a certain time.

The biggest issue for me is clubs that don't open the tee until 8am in the summer (ours is 7am), which is preposterous when it's already been light for 2-3 hours. Years ago at another club I was a member of, if it was daylight the course was open.
 
The tee times at our club aren't booked on Saturday mornings and it is better for it. I play in a rollup group that can be between 10 and 20 each week, and if we had to book tee times, we could be playing at various different times, rather than queuing together. It would result in most leaving, especially when several of us watch football in the afternoon so need to tee off by a certain time.

I play in two big groups

On a Saturday we have a group of 16 to 24 and we manage to get our tee times booked together

We have a group of around 30 to 40 on the Sunday and also have no issues getting the tee times together

No queuing required
The biggest issue for me is clubs that don't open the tee until 8am in the summer (ours is 7am), which is preposterous when it's already been light for 2-3 hours. Years ago at another club I was a member of, if it was daylight the course was open.

And some courses may not be able to open up earlier depending on location or proximity to houses to allow Green staff to work
 
I play in two big groups

On a Saturday we have a group of 16 to 24 and we manage to get our tee times booked together

We have a group of around 30 to 40 on the Sunday and also have no issues getting the tee times together

No queuing required


And some courses may not be able to open up earlier depending on location or proximity to houses to allow Green staff to work
Are you all using a script to book your tee times for you? Do you all jump on the booking system within seconds of the tee times being available each week? That's the only way anyone at our club would get times together.

Green staff can easily work with golfers on the course. Especially knowing everyone starts at the first tee. I've played at 4.30am before!
 
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Are you using a script to book your tee times for you? Do you all jump on the booking system within seconds of the tee times being available each week? That's the only way anyone at our club would get times together.

Green staff can easily work with golfers on the course. Especially knowing everyone starts at the first tee.

No script to book the times

We just organise ourselves to book when it opens

And if a golf course is close to houses etc then the greenstaff have to worry about noise levels
 
Are you all using a script to book your tee times for you? Do you all jump on the booking system within seconds of the tee times being available each week? That's the only way anyone at our club would get times together.

Green staff can easily work with golfers on the course. Especially knowing everyone starts at the first tee. I've played at 4.30am before!


Yeah but I’d think its gotta be slower going if GK’s are working alongside players from the off

Lots of courses the GK’s will get a ‘head start’ of at least an hour or more (and often before daylight) but there must be others where machinery cant be used till xxAM (for whatever reason) but they still need that kind of head start just to have time to get through the ‘to do’ list
 
No script to book the times

We just organise ourselves to book when it opens

And if a golf course is close to houses etc then the greenstaff have to worry about noise levels

Which means setting alarms and sitting on the website for the exact moment the tee times are available, like trying to buy concert tickets on Ticketmaster, but every single week. I much prefer turning up and knowing we'll be out within 30 minutes not having to book anything.

I bet there are far more courses nowhere near houses that still don't open the tee until 8am.
 
Which means setting alarms and sitting on the website for the exact moment the tee times are available. I much prefer turning up and knowing we'll be out within 30 minutes not having to book anything.

It does mean being organised , I’ll take that so I can turn up , tee off at the time I booked knowing when I will finish
I bet there are far more courses nowhere near houses that still don't open the tee until 8am.

And there will be reasons for that
 
It does mean being organised , I’ll take that so I can turn up , tee off at the time I booked knowing when I will finish


And there will be reasons for that
I always know when I'll finish by when I just turn up. No such luck if I log onto the website 2 minutes late and can't get a tee time until 2 hours later.

There shouldn't be any reasons to not have the course open from 7am at the latest in summer.
 
I always know when I'll finish by when I just turn up. No such luck if I log onto the website 2 minutes late and can't get a tee time until 2 hours later.

There shouldn't be any reasons to not have the course open from 7am at the latest in summer.

What happens when you turn up and there is a queue of 20 plus people waiting to go out ? You have time wasted just standing around

I know by booking a tee time I can turn up knowing that I don’t need to wait around
 
But who decided that that was the "right" way to play? You can use the argument that "I can't book in to play at that time".....well, yes you can. You just have to play in the rollup. Why is the rollup the "wrong" way to play? Why are the people that just want to play with their mates given priority over the people who want to play in rollups? Why is one "better" than the other? Why can't both ways of playing be accommodated for?
The club, through it's members will have made the decision. Enough of the members will have decided to make the change and this would (I expect) have been made at an AGM/EGM and communicated to all the members. Those who vehemently disagreed would have left and the rest would have embraced the change, or at least accepted it. This is how clubs work and how they adapt, No one solution works for every club and those who really don't like how a club does bookings (other gripes, like mats, are available) are free to move to another club that operates the way the way the golfer likes.
In your case, if you are so against the system, why are you re-joining? Surely the good over rides this slight grievance and your rant is a little misplaced?
 
What happens when you turn up and there is a queue of 20 plus people waiting to go out ? You have time wasted just standing around

I know by booking a tee time I can turn up knowing that I don’t need to wait around
There aren't 20 plus people waiting at 7am. I would be wasting significantly more time if I couldn't book it and had to tee off much later.
 
But 7 am isn’t the only time people want to play

And before tee bookings we turned up at 6:30 for our normal 7 start to see 20 new members there waiting
And yet somehow we manage to not have huge queues without having bookings on Saturdays. 🤷‍♂️

What happened to the members that also wanted to tee off at 7am after you kept booking 40 players worth of tee times within seconds of them appearing on the website?
 
Love how this thread has gone from an issue with roll ups to now descending into another one about how booking systems are the spawn of the devil and we should all go back to just turn up and play.

There’s no one system that fits everyone, there’s no perfect way to do it to appease everyone and guess what some clubs do it different to others. But as long as it works for the members of those clubs what’s the problem with that. Don’t like it take it to the committee to vote on or go elsewhere.
 
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And yet somehow we manage to not have huge queues without having bookings on Saturdays. 🤷‍♂️

What happened to the members that also wanted to tee off at 7am after you kept booking 40 players worth of tee times within seconds of them appearing on the website?

They decided to play at a different time that suited them 🤷‍♂️

And some joined in with us 👍
 
Love how this thread has gone from an issue with roll ups to now descending into another one about how booking systems are the span of the devil and we should all go back to just turn up and play.

There’s no one system that fits everyone, there’s no perfect way to do it to appease everyone and guess what some clubs do it different to others. But as long as it works for the members of those clubs what’s the problem with that. Don’t like it take it to the committee to vote on or go elsewhere.
That comment should close this thread. 👍
 
Love how this thread has gone from an issue with roll ups to now descending into another one about how booking systems are the span of the devil and we should all go back to just turn up and play.

There’s no one system that fits everyone, there’s no perfect way to do it to appease everyone and guess what some clubs do it different to others. But as long as it works for the members of those clubs what’s the problem with that. Don’t like it take it to the committee to vote on or go elsewhere.
Tee time bookings used to be a regular debate

Covid helped dismiss a lot of perceptions about it
 
Tee time bookings used to be a regular debate

Covid helped dismiss a lot of perceptions about it
If anything, Covid confirmed perceptions about it and led to tee bookings being removed, as everything was getting booked within minutes. But it's pointless to keep this conversation going, as our club is happy with our current system anyway.
 
If anything, Covid confirmed perceptions about it and led to tee bookings being removed, as everything was getting booked within minutes. But it's pointless to keep this conversation going, as our club is happy with our current system anyway.
Yeah.. my club went to tee-time booking around the time I joined because it was the start of Covid and that was mandated as I recall. But as soon as they were able to, they returned to the 'turn up and put your name down' approach, as that was what the majority of members wanted. At the time it was three-tee start, nowadays it's a two-tee start, which I actually prefer. If the club was massively busy it might be a problem, but I'm happy with the system as it is because I never seem to have a problem getting out pretty quickly. We know that there are roll-ups at 8:00 and 8:30 on Saturdays so we just work around them if we're not joining them - can play at 7:45, 8:25 ish or just before 9am. Usually don't have to wait more than 10 minutes.
 
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