While online tee time services like GolfNow and TeeOff provide national marketing and exposure, some course owners are con­cerned about los­ing con­trol of their tee sheet and maintaining price integrity among loyal customers who are pay­ing the “rack rate” for their tee times.

Con­sum­ers are dis­cov­er­ing that book­ing tee times, es­pe­cially at courses close to home, is get­ting eas­ier, cheaper and more con­ve­nient on­line, through third-party tee time sell­ers such as GolfNow.com and TeeOff.com, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

These companies, which tip­toed onto the scene al­most a de­cade ago, have be­come such a dom­i­nat­ing presence in the world of pub­lic golf—GolfNow booked nearly 15 mil­lion rounds in 2014—they have changed the way a large per­centage of golfers book rounds and how much they are will­ing to pay. Not only can they book tee times at night, when golf shops are closed, but they also search for courses of­fer­ing the best prices, some­times as low as $9 to $15. It was a win-win for all in­volved, the Post-Gazette reported.

Bud­get-con­scious golfers would be in­clined to play more be­cause of lower costs and per­haps even fre­quent differ­ent courses. And course own­ers liked the mar­ket­ing and aware­ness they re­ceived from the sites and the idea players might snatch off-peak tee times that oth­er­wise would go un­used, the Post-Gazette reported.

“They do have a tre­men­dous fol­low­ing and a tre­men­dous da­ta­base of golfers that looks for deals or bar­gains,” said Olde Stone­wall Golf Club head pro­fes­sional Sean Swi­dzin­ski. “Even if some­one doesn’t book through them, they have a lot of out-of-town peo­ple who no­ticed your place be­cause you’re on there.”

Mike Reimer, a North Hills in­sur­ance sales­man, be­gan us­ing GolfNow for that very rea­son when he pur­chased Pheasant Ridge Golf Course in Gib­so­nia three years ago, the Post-Gazette reported.

“As a brand new owner/op­er­a­tor I just de­cided that be­ing on their mar­ket place and hav­ing our name in front of thou­sands of golfers in Western Penn­syl­va­nia can’t be a bad thing,” Reimer said. “That’s the rea­son I got on board—to book tee times at the golf course. They did a great job. They do a great job.”

Olde Stone­wall used GolfNow for sev­eral years, giv­ing the on­line ser­vice sev­eral tee times it could dis­count and keep 100% of the fees. But, while golfers seek­ing to play the Mi­chael Hurdzan-designed lay­out could now do so at a much more af­ford­able rate, Olde Stone­wall quickly found it­self in the po­si­tion of ex­plain­ing the re­duced rate, even for just a cou­ple tee times, to its reg­u­lar cus­tom­ers. That’s when Swi­dzin­ski de­cided to stop us­ing GolfNow. But he is not alone, the Post-Gazette reported.

Course own­ers have be­come in­creas­ingly con­cerned about third-party sell­ers, fear­ful they are los­ing con­trol of their tee sheet and wor­ried about price in­teg­rity with loyal cus­tom­ers who are pay­ing the “rack rate” for their tee times. Ac­cord­ing to a re­cent study by the Na­tional Golf Foun­da­tion, those fac­tors are caus­ing con­ster­na­tion among course own­ers and op­er­a­tors who are try­ing to strike a bal­ance be­tween in­creas­ing rounds played and an­ger­ing reg­u­lar cus­tom­ers who pay a full rate, the Post-Gazette reported.

What’s more, be­cause golfers find such low rates with third-party sell­ers, the golf courses that are of­fer­ing those low rates are ba­si­cally com­pet­ing with them­selves and los­ing po­ten­tial rev­e­nue, as much as $40,000 an­nu­ally in some in­stances, the Post-Gazette reported.

“If you had golf op­er­a­tors that would do ab­so­lutely noth­ing to help build their brand and could have some­one else do it, that’s a pos­i­tive,” said Tom Rob­shaw, whose Oak­mont-based com­pany, Club Prophet Systems, designs golf man­age­ment soft­ware for 1,600 courses in 16 coun­tries. “But I can’t see many pos­i­tives from a business-owner’s per­spec­tive where the very solu­tion you’ve cho­sen [to build your brand] you’re now com­pet­ing against. You have enough com­pe­ti­tion out there that you don’t need a vir­tual one.”

The travel in­dus­try—ho­tels and air­lines—had sim­i­lar is­sues when third-party in­ven­tory sell­ers such as Ex­pe­dia and Trav­e­loc­ity came on the scene. Even­tu­ally, the two sides came to a col­lab­o­ra­tive agree­ment: Peak travel times would be re­served for cus­tom­ers who are not price-con­scious. Less at­trac­tive times that were slow to sale would be re­duced for dis­count seek­ers, the Post-Gazette reported.

Un­like the travel in­dus­try, golfers seek­ing tee times have not flocked to third-party sell­ers as much as peo­ple think. In a re­cent study, the NGF said only 15% of all golfers use ser­vices such as GolfNow to book tee times. Part of that is be­cause of the num­ber of older or re­tired peo­ple who play golf. That is not the same de­mo­graphic that is likely to book travel us­ing their tab­lets or smart phones, the Post-Gazette reported.

How­ever, the study also found that 81% of core golfers—those who play eight or more times a year—have used a third-party re­seller so they can view mul­ti­ple courses at the same time, 76% be­cause they were search­ing for lower prices. That, of course, is the in­tent of the third-party seller, the Post-Gazette reported.

The ben­e­fit for course op­er­a­tors, ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey, was 41% of core golfers said the ser­vices gave them ac­cess to courses they would oth­er­wise not have played. And 48% used third-party re­sellers when away from home, the Post-Gazette reported.

“Price in­teg­rity is ev­ery­thing,” Swi­dzin­ski said. “I’m up front with ev­ery­one, whether it’s an event or a mem­ber or some­one off the street. We don’t ne­go­ti­ate prices. Main­tain­ing value and know­ing there are no deals to discount is the only way to have in­teg­rity.”

Ac­cord­ing to a story in Golf­week mag­a­zine, a man in San Diego who booked 466 tee times with GolfNow in 2015 (not all for him) paid only $3.76 for an 18-hole round at nearby Car­mel Moun­tain Ranch Coun­try Club.

On April 1, when the tem­per­a­ture was 65 de­grees, golfers could go on GolfNow.com and get a tee time at Pittsburgh Na­tional Golf Club in Gib­so­nia, one of the bet­ter pub­lic courses in Western Penn­syl­va­nia, for $17 (cart in­cluded) be­gin­ning at 2:42 p.m. That price dropped to $14 for 18 holes (cart in­cluded) at 3:46 p.m. The week­day rate for a golfer who walked up and paid his greens fee in the pro shop is $38, no mat­ter what time of day, the Post-Gazette reported.

On that same date, golfers could book on GolfNow.com and get 18 holes with cart for un­der $20 at Grand View ($15) and Sun­crest ($17), start­ing af­ter 2:30 p.m. Pheas­ant Ridge, which charges $39 week­days, $49 week­ends, has been on GolfNow for as low as $15. Birds­foot Golf Club owner Travis Lind­say, who charges $59 ev­ery day to play his up­scale 18-hole lay­out in Free­port, cringed when he saw GolfNow of­fer one of his bar­tered tee times for $15, the Post-Gazette reported.

If more courses in Western Penn­syl­va­nia have rates as low as $15 on GolfNow, the fear is those dis­counts will lower the over­all rate courses in the re­gion can charge. In Char­les­ton, S.C., sev­eral course own­ers banded together and agreed to drop GolfNow for that rea­son. And it’s among the rea­sons Reimer de­cided to end his rela­tion­ship with GolfNow this year, the Post-Gazette reported.

“When you start see­ing Pheas­ant Ridge for $14 to $18, it hurts our brand, it hurts our im­age,” Reimer said. “If we were go­ing to a des­ti­na­tion and we didn’t know the golf courses and we saw a course for $18 with cart, we wouldn’t play the golf course.”

If you don’t care when or where you play, and you wait long enough, golfers can find deals that make Black Friday block­bust­ers look pricey. But that cre­ates a sce­nario where those off-peak times, and prices, now become in de­mand for the con­sumer who will wait for the bar­gain, the Post-Gazette reported.

“When you go low enough, if you’re put­ting your greens fee out there one-third of its nor­mal value, the per­cep­tion is, one, there’s a prob­lem, or, two, you’re strug­gling to at­tract busi­ness,” Swi­dzin­ski said. “But, three, the big­gest thing is, if you have a low rate out there, even­tu­ally that be­comes your rate. I’d rather look to raise our rate than lower our rate.”

But, with the in­dus­try caught in a down­ward spi­ral that has seen courses close and rounds played dwin­dle, own­ers and op­er­a­tors have to find ways to at­tract play­ers—new and old—to their fa­cil­i­ties. Ser­vices such as TeeOff.com, which is spon­sored by the PGA Tour and has booked more than 500,000 tee times at 3,000 courses na­tion­wide, give them a way to do that, the Post-Gazette reported.

“My feel­ing is that the in­dus­try is mov­ing, very co­op­er­a­tively, in the right di­rec­tion,” Peter Hill, CEO of Billy Casper Golf, said in a re­cent Wall Street Jour­nal ar­ti­cle. “The third-party re­sellers are ad­just­ing to re­al­ity. No­body wants to drive prices so low they are un­sus­tain­able. That’s like eat­ing your young.”

For sev­eral years, Lind­say said he gave up two tee times a day to GolfNow.com—that’s eight play­ers at $59 each—in ex­change for free national mar­ket­ing, use of the com­pany’s soft­ware and the pos­si­bil­ity that new cus­tom­ers, look­ing for a deal, would visit his course, the Post-Gazette reported.

But the ques­tion re­mains: Did the ser­vice ac­tu­ally drive new cus­tom­ers to his course, or just convince cur­rent ones to wait for a block­buster deal that was some­times half the go­ing rate? For ex­am­ple, last year, dur­ing a rainy month of March, Birds­foot did only 84 rounds de­spite hav­ing pric­ing for two four­somes each day dras­ti­cally low­ered by GolfNow.com, the Post-Gazette reported.

This year, with­out us­ing the on­line ser­vice, Birds­foot did 1,463 rounds in March be­cause the weather was much bet­ter and sig­nifi­cantly warmer, the Post-Gazette reported.

“The big­gest is­sue is you need to pro­tect your tee times and the third-party seller is not al­low­ing that,” Lind­say said. “They’re es­sen­tially say­ing they’re go­ing to set the rate and they can charge any amount. Soon as they do that, you’ve got a prob­lem. Any­time you’re deal­ing with a third party and you’re los­ing con­trol of your pric­ing, then you need to start re­ally look­ing closely at what you’re do­ing be­cause they’re hold­ing the cards.”