Thursday, April 13, 2000
Tee times only mouse click away
USA Today
Golfers and golf course managers are just beginning to discover online tee time reservations. The ones who have are getting hooked.
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TEE TIMES ONLINE
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The site with the most Tristate golf courses available to book online (both public and private) is TheGolfer.com. You can currently reserve tee times online for Devou and Grand Oaks at netcaddy.com. A.J. Jolly says they are on schedule to begin accepting online reservations through greens.com within the next month.
Here are five sites that book reservations online for different courses around the nation.
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netcaddy.com: This is a Cincinnati-based company that is just entering this field.
• eTeetimes.com: For the moment, this is arguably the most successful site, booking nearly 1,000 rounds of golf online daily.
• Book4golf.com: This site won't be running until May, but it threatens to ultimately be the big foot of the tee time sites. It has signed exclusive contracts with two of the largest golf course operators in the country.
• Greens.com: CEO Steve Darrow brashly projects that nearly 50 percent of all tee times will be booked online within four years. ''It's a race for who will own the marketplace.''
• TheGolfer.com: This site is especially big on the West Coast -- particularly in the San Diego area, where it books tee times at Torrey Pines Golf Course.
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''(It's) a thousand times better,'' said Arnie von Massenhausen, a 35-year-old mortgage broker in San Jose, Calif. ''You basically have confirmation immediately, and you don't have to deal with someone on the phone during normal business hours.''
Three weeks ago, von Massenhausen logged on to greens.com and with a few clicks, booked a tee time at a local course. Otherwise, he would have had to call the clubhouse at 7 a.m. to beat the crowd and get a time, as tee times are just slightly less precious than housing in Silicon Valley.
''It was absolutely awesome to go on whenever I wanted to,'' he said, adding that he just booked three tee times for a trip to Hawaii next week.
Behind the new trend is a mere 65 percent occupancy rate at the nation's 16,000-plus golf courses. While swank courses like Pebble Beach turn golfers away in droves, hundreds of municipal, public and semi-private courses are starving for additional business.
Meanwhile, the country's 26 million golfers each book an average of 20 tee times every year.
Over the past two years, more than a dozen firms have created online tee time sites. Most sites make about $5 commission for each one they book. Many of the sites also plan to profit from sales of golf equipment, golf vacations and advertising.
But there are potential snags to this Brave New World of golfing. Among them: a limited choice of courses and yet another group of marketers eager to gather valuable information on an affluent group of consumers.
And convincing golfers to sign on in order to sign up for tee times is no chip shot. Fewer than 1 percent of tee times are booked online nationally.
''Right now, the whole thing is a mess,'' said Mike Stachura, associate editor of Golf Digest. ''One year from now, only three of these companies will be around. And, ultimately, probably just one.''
Mike Craven, an investment consultant in Portland, uses the Web to book tee times for business trips. ''I go home and sit on the P.C. at nine at night and put these trips together after the kids go to bed,'' he said.
Several companies are willing to help a golf course get wired, typically at little or no cost. Using specially designed hardware and software, course administrators can keep track of their tee sheets electronically.
''The day of the cigar box and a pencil and paper are gone,'' said Jim Duffus of Scottsdale Links at Indian Bend, in Scottsdale, Ariz.
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