Golf course operations glossary

The list of every tee time a golf course has available on a given day, together with who is booked into each one.

It is the operational centre of a course. Anything that lets two people believe they have the same 8:10 — a paper book plus an inbox, or a website plus a phone log — is two tee sheets, and two tee sheets eventually disagree in front of a golfer.

The gap between consecutive tee times, usually between 7 and 12 minutes, which sets how many groups a course can send out per hour.

It is the single biggest lever on daily capacity and on pace of play. Going from 10 minutes to 8 adds roughly 25 percent more tee times and will back the course up if the field cannot sustain it.

A reduced green fee that applies to tee times after a set time of day, when a full round may not be completable before dark.

It is priced against the clock rather than the day, so it has to be applied by comparing a tee time against a cutoff — not by discounting a whole afternoon.

A format where every group starts simultaneously on a different hole, so the whole field begins and finishes together.

It takes the course out of normal tee sheet rotation entirely. The tee sheet has to be blocked for the window rather than sold, which is why outings need to be on the sheet before they are announced.

Tee times a course gives to a marketplace as payment for software or marketing, which the marketplace then resells, typically at a discount.

It is a real cost that never appears on a statement. Four prime times a day at a $40 rate across a 200-day season is about $32,000 of forfeited revenue for software advertised as free.

A privately owned golf course open to the public that charges per round, as distinct from a private club or a municipal course.

It is the category most exposed to online booking, because its golfers are not members and have no standing tee time — they decide where to play the same week they play.

A booked group that neither arrives nor cancels, leaving a tee time unsold and unplayed.

It costs the time twice — once because nobody played it and once because it could not be resold. A one-tap cancel link in a reminder converts a share of no-shows into openings you can still fill.

The scoring format where every stroke over the round is counted and the lowest total wins, as opposed to match play or points formats.

It is what nearly every course event is scored as, and it is the only format most software needs to do properly. Formats like scrambles, skins and match play are separate scoring rules, not settings.

Gross is the number of strokes actually taken; net is that number after a player’s handicap has been subtracted.

A league needs net for anybody to keep showing up after week three; a one-day tournament usually does not. Deciding which a board is showing avoids the parking-lot argument.

A league rule that discards each member’s worst nights before totalling the season, so one bad week does not decide the standings.

It is close to universal in weekly leagues. The rule that matters is never dropping a member’s last remaining week — a member who has played once would otherwise have no season at all.