How to Make Golf Tournament Season Run Smoothly

    Golf season in the Midwest is in full force. We see golf outing after golf outing all summer long, only to be followed by high school season in the fall where afternoon tee times are always taken. As the tournament manager at our club, it is important that we keep all these events in order so that nothing gets double booked, and everybody gets what they are looking for out of their event. Although there are many ways to achieve this, here is how we have found to work best and how you can do this too. 

    First is to keep and excel calendar that has all the events of the club for the year, or a master calendar as we like to call it. Keeping this to reference each month allows you to quickly see what events are coming up. We also like to add the contact info for these events into the calendar too. This makes it easier to reach out and ensures we don’t lose it in between when the outing was booked and the outing itself.

    After creating the calendar, we keep a tournament information sheet that outlines the event from start to finish. The best way to do this is to create a template and use it for all your events, no matter how big or small. You don’t have to use the full sheet for all of them, but it’s better to have too much information than not enough. We included a wide range of information, including registration needs and times, prizes, hole set up, hole contests, format, sponsor signs, what to do for ties, handicaps, as well as food and beverage needs and an extra place for notes for things that are more outing specific. I would say 50% of our outings use less than half of our sheet, but a few will use it in its entirety.

    The final thing I like to do is keep a folder for each outing that contains all the documents we used for the tournament that day. We keep the tournament information sheet we just talked about, any format sheets or other things given to the outing, a leaderboard, a tee sheet, and finally a copy of the invoice from the day. We keep these all to reference for next year so that when we go to planin the offseason, we have the information to plan for the following year. I also like to keep some extra notes on the folder for things like pace of play, any issues we had, or anything else I may find worth jotting down. All this information has helped in making our outings run smooth and helps in getting our outings to come back year after year.