As advised last month with the increase in male membership (an extra nine new members in June alone) and more men wanting to play on a Saturday morning the Saturday booking sheet was at near full capacity. Consideration was given to using tee 13, which does work as we can then reduce the number of people going off of tee one, but as we all know starting on tee 13 is not popular. After a great deal of thought and research it was suggested that we trial a two tee start which also offered the following numerical benefits.
3 tee start 2 Tee start
Men am 56 72
Men pm 96 96
Total tee times 152 168
As you can see an extra 16 tee off times were created .
The Player’s Committee could see that the proposal might well offer a good solution and so the two tee trial was duly tried with the following results also reported:
1. The average time to play a round of Golf was reduced to around four hours or less
2. Increasing the tee off times from seven to eight minutes on Tee one improved the pace of golf.
3. Both the morning and afternoon fields reported quicker rounds and reduced hold ups at the usual ‘pinch-points’.
4. With the increased tee availability the frost affected early morning players were able to re-book later in the day
5. There was no evidence of reduced bar or Café takings.
6. There was a far ‘smoother’ flow of members through both the Pro-shop and Café. Without the usual pro-shop queues Jim, and the staff, enjoyed having some time to interact with members
On the 23rd June, during prize giving, a club house vote was taken, by way of a show of hands, and there was a 100% vote in favour of the change.
A further show of hands, with a near full club house, was taken on the 30th June at the Barclay Engravers Foursome prize giving:- the vote was 99.9% in favour of the two tee start with just one dissenting hand.
The Men’s Committee fully discussed the trial in their July 3rd Committee meeting and it was decided that they were firmly in favour of the two tee start.
This recommendation will be taken to the next Player’s Committee on 12th July.