OK, I haven’t talked to my pro, but that seems unlikely to help as we have far less demand and competition for slots… I don’t have a specific advice for you, but I’ve been thinking about this some and I’m going to extrapolate some lessons I’ve learned elsewhere… So let’s get virtual.
In 2005-2006 I was a Guild Leader for a raiding guild in World of Warcraft. It was an amazing teacher of human nature, organizing chaos and managing people. We had 40+ members, 25 raid slots and 2-3 raid nights a week depending on what was going on… Everyone wanted to raid when they were available, so we had to find ways to keep things fair, reward people who did not get raid slots and wanted them while keeping people engaged in the guild… Honestly, it was very similar to a country club environment… People were paying monthly fees to gain access to the game, but had to get along with others to actually get to do what they wanted… you could leave the guild and join another one, but you’d have similar problems in other guilds. Based on running that, here is my advice.
- Keep things as fair and transparent as possible. Make sure your members know and understand both the problem at hand (too many golfers, too few tee times), the system in place, and whenever exceptions occur, make sure there is a reason behind it.
- Make sure you are cycling through the membership and considering people with inconsistent schedules… If you have a member who can only play 1 Saturday a week, make sure they get to play that Saturday
- If you are going to have games and season long score keeping, make sure it favors average attendance vs total attendance… Basically, don’t reward the guy who finds a way to play every Saturday… Give the guys who can only play a few weekends out of the summer a chance to compete. This cuts both ways, as you don’t want someone who only played one weekend to win everything.
- If possible, find activities at the club for people who didn’t get a tee slot… You’ll want a few extra people at the course in case you have last minute cancellations… A bad weekend with 4-5 empty slots will make people question your system, so you want some redundancy built it. If you have a simulator, it would be a great resource… You could also consider things like free clinics for putting and short game.
- Know that your system won’t be perfect, and it will have problems (and you will make mistakes). Ask for feedback from the membership, and have honest conversations about what you are doing. Have them get invested in making things work. You are going to have the negative guys who say it’s rigged and bullshit regardless of what you do (hat tip to you, Exussum… one of the best Warlocks in our guild, but a real pain in the ass) so it’s good to have some other members who know you are doing what you can and are willing to talk positively about your system.
Here’s the framework of the system I’d set up… This assumes you have more golfers than tee times, but it’s not a HUGE gap… If you have more than twice as many golfers than you do tee times, you have too many members, and it’s going to be a long summer… You could still probably make the system work, but asking people to not play 2 weekends in a row would be an interesting challenge. I’m also a member of a club, and regularly play with the crochety old men who have enough time to complain about everything, so I know enough to anticipate complaints, hopefully. The one major problem is the fact that most guys have established groups and want to play together. This makes things a little harder, but we can overcome.
- Announce a new weekend program. Explain that you have more golfers than tee times, and had to come up with a new system to make sure everyone got an opportunity to play golf. Explain that priority would go to people who had not played recently, while also trying to make sure those who wanted to play could.
- Have a lottery, allow people to enter as singles, doubles, threesomes and foursomes… The goal of the first few weeks will be to establish a rotation for the various groups… Create your first tee sheet, and send it out Wednesday morning (Sign ups close on Tuesday at 5pm)… Everyone who is playing is assigned a tee time, everyone on the wait list is given rank…
- Allow cancellations on Wednesday that don’t count as a “round played”… slot in the waitlist people and have official tee times out on Thursday morning. (People can also remove themselves from the waitlist)
- Anyone on the Tee Sheet on Thursday is counted as having a “round played” for the weekend. Waitlist is still active, and hopefully you have an activity that encourages a few waitlisted people to show up on Saturday.
- Anyone who cancels Thursday-Saturday gets counted as having played, anyone who gets in off the wait list does not… This is to encourage people to stay on the waitlist and fill open slots without costing them “their round” while also making sure people show up for the rounds they signed up for.
- Open signups again on Tuesday, with people who did not have tee times the previous week getting first priority for tee times, then a lottery for those who did play… Then run everything the same. If you have more people who didn’t play the week before than times on the tee sheet, this system doesn’t work as well, but make sure no one sits 3 weekends in a row!
My goal here is a system that rewards people who didn’t get a tee time to make sure they have a tee time the next weekend, but also encourages people to sign up every week they can play (while encouraging people on the waitlist to be at the course, as they might be able to fill a late cancellation without costing them a round next week). It’s probably a little confusing, and won’t be awesome to maintain the list in the office, but I think it’s fair and clear enough…
If you want to toss in a competition, if you have a weekly game, just take the top 5 finishes from every player… Everyone should have more than 5 weekends played, so while this system will reward the people who play a lot, they still have to have 5 good weekends of golf to win…
Hope that helps!
