The Infrastructure of Golf Booking Is Broken — But the Fix Is Not What You Think
A field note in response to Old Tom Capital’s white paper: Rebuilding Tee Time Access
Old Tom’s white paper is one of the sharpest takes on tee time access I have read. The opportunity is real, the logic is sound, and the diagnosis is accurate. But writing a compelling thesis is one thing. Living inside this ecosystem is another. After years of conversations with platform providers, tee sheet vendors, course operators, associations in the U.S. and federations in Europe, I can tell you the path to a solution is not the one most people imagine.
The numbers are too big to ignore
As Old Tom’s white paper makes clear, the U.S. public access tee time market moves more than 9 billion dollars a year in transactions, with global potential around 15 billion. Yet cancellations, no shows, and unbooked inventory leak over 12 billion dollars annually in the United States. No shows alone cost more than 1.2 billion. Fixing access and utilization would change the economics of golf, not just the convenience.
What golfers actually want
Old Tom listed it well. Golfers want four simple things:
- All available tee times in their area, not a partial list
- Transparent pricing without surprise fees or barter distortions
- Real time alerts when a spot opens
- Easy group booking, including split payments and foursome coordination
What they usually get is a platform that shows only a fraction of the real inventory, adds service fees on top of green fees that have already risen sixteen percent in four years, forces single-player flows that don’t work for group golf, and delivers a user experience that still feels stuck in the late nineties. Endless refreshing, clunky mobile pages, and phone calls just to finish a booking.
The orchestration fantasy
The white paper argues for an invisible control layer that normalizes all inventory, protects operator economics, and gives golfers full visibility. Think Stripe for payments or Google Flights for airlines. On paper, perfect.
In practice, nearly impossible.
There are hundreds of tee sheet systems worldwide. GolfNow still holds outsized influence in the U.S., even if its grip is loosening. In Europe, Zest.Golf has worked for years to be the Amadeus of golf. The result is about 230 golf courses on the platform. That is not scale.
Even if you convinced every tee sheet to integrate, you would still face the trust problem. Many operators are done with middlemen. They want 100% control of their inventory and 100% ownership of their customer data. And even a neutral layer becomes a risk once it grows. Mission statements change when acquisition checks arrive. We have all seen what happens when a dominant player is bought by a media conglomerate. Clubs will not sign up to recreate that story.
What actually works
The only credible way forward is simpler and already underway. Golf clubs are getting smarter. Their tee sheets and booking flows need to look and feel like modern consumer software, not something from the early 2000s.
Make mobile the default. Remove forced account creation before payment. Let a golfer book with an email and a card in seconds. Gather profile details after the transaction, not before. Treat the booking like a sale, not a registration process.
On no shows, copy what works. In Spain and Portugal golfers prepay and must cancel 48h in advance or they forfeit the fee. That policy is now standard and no shows are not a systemic issue. Those markets also benefit from modern platforms like Golfmanager, which delivers a clean, intuitive experience for both operators and players. You do not need a grand unifying theory to fix no shows. You need clear rules and a booking flow that supports them.
The Right Role for Aggregation
We do not need another middleman that captures the transaction and the customer. What we need is a discovery layer that respects the chain of control.
Aggregate public tee times that are already visible on club websites. Make it easy to search, filter, compare, and set alerts. Allow AI powered natural language search so a golfer can ask for eighteen holes under $90 within ten miles at 9 a.m. on Saturday. Then send the golfer directly to the club’s site to complete the booking. The club keeps the revenue and the data. The golfer gets speed and clarity. No commissions. No inventory barter.
This model aligns incentives the right way. It’s not funded with barter or downstream fees that extract value from the course. It’s funded with subscriptions.
Golfers get a free tier, plus a low-cost premium tier for unlimited alerts, advanced comparisons, saved favorites, group coordination, and conversational search. Most golfers will happily pay a few dollars a month for a service that saves them time, gives them better access, and actually saves money thanks to the ability to check all the courses at the same time. Clubs pay nothing, and they stay in control.
And yes, there are platforms already doing this. RapidTeeGolf are probably the most interesting player in this space. What also makes it different is that there’s a real team behind it. They do exactly what I just described, and from what I’ve understood, the AI chat is coming out in a week or two. But you’ll want to take a look already, because much of what I just described is already there.
Lessons from the field
The pain Old Tom outlined is real. The inefficiencies are real. But the durable answers are simpler than a universal switchboard. They come from clubs running their tee sheets cleanly, giving golfers a modern and intuitive booking experience, setting clear payment and cancellation rules, and adding a discovery layer that helps golfers find options, without hijacking the customer relationship.
The bottom line
The winner here will not be the flashiest marketplace. It will be the operator who understands two truths at once. Clubs must keep control of pricing, inventory, and data. Golfers must get the fastest, cleanest path from search to booked foursome on a phone.
Build around those truths and you change the economics of golf for the better. Try to replace them with another centralized gatekeeper and we repeat the past.
When clubs win, golfers win. And when both win, the whole game moves forward.
Teemu Ruuska
https://www.linkedin.com/in/teemuruuska/