Pace of play is a topic that gets debated over and over and over.
my course was the busiest 18 hole course in Ontario past 2 seasons and will quite likely be again this year. In our shortened season we put through over 43,000 rounds in each of 2020 and 2021 and that with golf courses being shut down for 6 weeks in each year due to C19. We will surpass those numbers again this year. We run 10 minute tee intervals.
As a mid-upper public access course with a prime time green fee of $89 plus tax to walk ( $20 pp for a cart) we try to be cognizant of pace as pace along with course conditions and customer service are the top 3 factors impacting customer satisfaction. We have marshals on F/S/Su and purchased the Tagmarshal GPS Golf Course Pop Management system in 2020. This is a multifunctional GPS tracking system in each cart ( 73% of our customers take carts) and clip on trackers for walking groups. This system tracks every cary and walking group on the course for position and there time versus the benchmark we have determined. The cart displays not only the group's elapsed time, but their progress versus the benchmark we set and that is shown on the screen with different colours , green if on or ahead of pace, orange if a minute or two down red if more. A map displays the position and status of every cart and walking group and this is monitored on a laptop by the starter, and on tv monitors in the backshop and Pro shop. Alerts are displayed with groups who are trending the wrong way. In addition to the visual , colour display on the screen we can send a note to the cart screen ( its size of an ipad) to give them a push or nudge. Most often that is all that is needed but we also will send out a staff member to speak to groups that falter and don't get back on pace.
Ours is a long, difficult course with water in play on 14 holes and lots of fescue grass lining fairways. For two seasons we tracked the average time it took groups to play each hole and determined that the time par we would use was 4hours and 30 and this is broken down with a time for each hole ranging from 7 minutes to 18. Mornings we will lower the time par to 4 hours and I play most mornings and have not had a round over 3:45 and nothing over 4:20 in the pm.
you have to cater to beginners, elderly walkers and walkers are without question the biggest obstacle as the course has a few long treks between holes. It can be a tough slog some days as you get people who have never played before , a group a few weeks ago had 3 foursomes and 9 rental sets !
Generally we get folks like this moving by having them play a best ball versus own ball, having them skip half or a full hole, giving slow walkers a free power cart after 9 holes etc. we don't have a roaming bev cart just two bev stations on course.
i do the scoring for our 3 leagues and working carts I see cards come in with gawd awful numbers, 130 , 140+ eek ! However IMO, it's those who play for $$$ that tend to be the biggest culprits.
As my owner likes to say, welcome to public golf , we are a 4:30 course. If you want to play faster join a private club 🙂
