Become an effective golf group leader

A lot of golf group captains make their life and their buddies lives difficult because they try to run golf events in all the wrong ways.

One way to annoy everyone is to send a lot of e-mails around with status updates and spreadsheets. It is particularly annoying to those who have already responded that they cannot play golf that day but still receive updates, jokes, and irrelevant information regarding the event.

You can start to efficiently manage your golf group when you set up a golf event using TeeTimeHelper. Your buddies and group members will thank you!

Here's some of the options you have after you create and event with TeeTimeHelper:

As you can see it is easy to invite one golfer, or many golfers. If you run out of specified tee times it is simple to add another tee time.

Sending a message to your golfers is efficient because you can choose to send your message to everybody,  only send it to those who are attending, only those who are not, or only those who haven't responded. By targeting your e-mail messages you are limiting your audience which your golf group will appreciate and makes your communication more effective - when one of your members receives a message from you they know it is important.

Randomizing your event mixes up those who have RSVP'd yes with the available tee times. Locking your golf event prevents your members from changing their RSVP's.

Cloning your event is an easy way to create your next event by pre-filling the e-mail addresses and names. You will want to do this for your next event!

Finally, you can print a formatted tee sheet or remove the event altogether. Note that removing the event is not reversible; you will be given a stern warning before you continue to do that.

What are you waiting for? Become and effective golf leader today!


Happy Golfing!

The TeeTimeHelper Team

Randomizing golf events explained

One of the nice features in TeeTimeHelper is the ability to randomize a golf event. It's only available to the golf administrator (the event organizer) as you probably don't want any of your group randomly changing tee times around.

When you click on the "Randomize Golf Event" link it will show you the breakdown of the number of groups and the number of people in each group so you know what to expect if you do confirm the randomization. Determining the number of golfers in a group a takes a calcuation because we just don't want to fill the maximum number of golfers for each group - this can lead to one person by themselves in the last group.

So we definitely don't want someone in a group with no partner, and we certainly don't want a 2-ball (2 person group) stuck behind a 4 person group.

Say you have 9 players and 3 golf groups. Filling the first two groups with 4 people each and one golfer left over is no good. You could have the first group with 2 people, the second with 3 people, and the last group with 4.  We don't think this is ideal and our system detects this situation and will set it up as 3 groups of 3 to avoid the variation in numbers.

We always put the smaller group first so that they do not get frustrated behind a larger group which takes longer to play.

Randomizing an event also sends e-mail to each golfer who have RSVP'd yes to update them that the event was randomized. As you are the administrator you have the ability to randomize the event again but another e-mail will be sent to all your golfers.

Even after randomizing the administrator can also adjust the groupings by manually changing the tee times if necessary.

Happy Golfing!

The TeeTimeHelper Team

Control your e-mail notifications with TeeTimeHelper

Golf group organizers and members of their golf group can rejoice now that a much needed feature was added to control the number of e-mails they receive.

We have added a global preferences page which gives the option to receive or not receive e-mails under certain circumstances.

For example, now golf group leaders can receive every RSVP through e-mail or opt out. Also, group members and organizer have several other options such as receiving notifications when tee times are added, when an event is locked or unlocked, and reminder e-mails before an event starts.

Here is a screenshot with an example of how easy it is to opt-in or opt-out of the golf event e-mail notifications:

Organize your golf event today with TeeTimeHelper.com

Happy Golfing!

The TeeTimeHelper.com Team

TeeTimeHelper is Growing

It started with an idea. What would happen if you provide a simple, useful tool to help people organize their outings with their friends? We didn't know the answer to this beforehand, and we didn't have the time or money to do focus groups.

So we just built the basic functionality to TeeTimeHelper and wanted to see what would happen.  Four years later, we can chart our progress by the number of events we've helped organize.

Number of golf events organized by TeeTimeHelper

TeeTimeHelper is growing at approximately 40% each year, and appears to be accelerating. This is great news for our users because when we see a chart like this it inspires us to provide even more tools at no cost.

For example, we just added  a section"Upcoming Events" into every event details page so now all your events are tied together and you can easily flip between events.

We also added better navigation, better visual feedback for actions on the web site, and clearer messages throughout the site.

Organize your golf group today with TeeTimeHelper.com

Happy Golfing!

The TeeTimeHelper Team

Easily Organize a Golf Shotgun Event with TeeTimeHelper

You can organize different types of events with TeeTimeHelper. In this blog post we will focus on quickly hosting a shotgun event.

A golf shotgun event means everyone tees off at the same with groups starting on different holes. This allows a golf facility to fill up to the entire course at one time instead of having everyone start on the first hole with 8-12 minutes between each group.

The primary benefits of the shotgun start are two-fold. First, everyone finishes around the same time so more people can participate in a lunch or activity after the event. Secondly, golf operations people like shotguns because more people can fill the golf course at one time instead of having open golf holes with no golfers.

Running a shotgun event with TeeTimeHelper is similar to hosting other types of golf events, many of the fields are the same such as event date/time and venue.

Simply select the maximum number of tee times for your shotgun and invite your golfers. We handle sending the e-mail invites and keeping track of who has RSVP'd.

We'll even send a reminder message to your golf group the day before the event starts.

If you change your mind and wish to change your event to different tee times no problem, the standard TeeTimeHelper interface can handle this quickly without removing your event.

Setup a shotgun event today

Happy Golfing!

The TeeTimeHelper Team

TeeTimeHelper Feature: Upcoming events displayed

Great news for regular golfers! You can now see a summary list of all the dates and venues of your upcoming events.

Just use any of the links e-mailed to you to check the status of an event and at the bottom all your upcoming events are conveniently listed.

As you can see you can easily see an overview of your events. When you switch back and forth between your golf events to see who is playing, change your RSVP or add a comment.

Setup your next golf outing with TeeTimeHelper.com.

Happy Golfing!

TeeTimeHelper.com Team

Latest updates and fixes for TeeTimeHelper

We've made TeeTimeHelper more informative and easier to use with visual confirmation messages and big, bold buttons.

In the past TeeTimeHelper relied on wordy confirmation and error messages. We now use graphical elements to express what is happening with your RSVP's and event administration edits.

For example:

You can see the large green checkbox to confirm the golfer's information was changed. Conversely, we also show things that are not necessarily errors but not exactly confirmation that everything went as expected:

And then we also have the error messages such as:

And finally, we have made the buttons larger and easier to read, click and press:

As you can see the green buttons are larger and more distinguished. Also, when you hover the mouse over the button it will change to a different color to give you more visual feedback.

Please send us your comments for further TeeTimeHelper improvements! Some of our best ideas features have come from TeeTimeHelper users.

Happy Golfing!

The TeeTimeHelper.com Team