I’m Fed Up Of Golf Clubs Not Sticking To Pre-Booked Tee Times. It’s Impacted Me Multiple Times

There are plenty of reasons to love playing golf, especially on those days when it feels like you have the entire course to yourself. That freedom often allows you to play your best golf, without the pressure of other people breathing down your neck.

If you decide to play on a nice, sunny weekend or try to squeeze a round in straight after work, you’re likely to run into a bit of congestion on the fairway. On those occasions, you just have to bite the bullet and accept the trade-off; you’ll relish the conditions, but will have to play a little faster than usual.

However, sometimes, you can do all the forward planning in the world to avoid a queue at the tee box, and still find yourself sandwiched between groups that weren’t even supposed to be there.

I’m relatively new to golf. I only picked up a club for the first time three years ago. Suffice it to say, I’m a very average player – I get the yips, I top it and chunk it, the ball doesn’t always go where I planned for it to go, and I would admit I’m sometimes guilty of a bit of slow play.

I’m getting better and practicing a lot, but one of my anxiety triggers on a golf course is the stress of having other golfers waiting behind me.

Frustratingly, that’s something that can happen through absolutely no fault of my own. It’s really irritating when I’ve carefully booked a tee time, only to get to the clubhouse and find that all sense of timekeeping has gone out of the window.

On more than one occasion, at a range of different courses, I’ve been told to hang fire on my pre-booked tee time as another random group has just been sent out ahead of me.

This happens at my local municipal fairly often. I don’t really grumble too much about it there as it’s not the most prestigious venue. It’s cheap and cheerful, very laid-back, and logistics are not something the clubhouse generally worries about too much. Sometimes this casual approach benefits me, sometimes it doesn’t, but it pretty much evens itself out over the year.

However, this issue of messing with tee times or allowing a group to turn up and be shoehorned into a time slot that doesn’t really exist has even happened at the very best course I’ve played on. With the green fees you pay at the top courses, this really shouldn’t be happening.

I remember turning up to the fancy car park with plenty of time to spare. I had a brief warm-up on the putting practice area before going to check-in, only to be told that another group had jumped in a couple of minutes prior. Our group was then told to expect a bit of a backlog on the course.

We gave the group in front a bit of breathing room, but lo and behold, we ended up waiting around on pretty much every tee box on the back nine after catching up with them. In turn, we had another two groups right behind us.

Thankfully, all the players behind us were patient and amiable about it. At the end of the day, we were all just part of an unfortunate (yet avoidable) chain reaction, where none of us could really go any faster without hitting into the group in front.

Generally speaking, I’m all for flexibility and adapting to the day. It would be foolish, especially in a sport like golf, to think that everything should go according to plan. On the course, the ball is going to do what it wants, but that shouldn’t be the case for the clubhouse, too.

As a stickler for timekeeping and planning things out meticulously, and as someone who can’t help but feel a little nervous on the golf course, this just adds an extra layer of stress and completely defeats the object of booking ahead.

This is supposed to be a regimented and organised game. Messing with tee times is anti-golf.