Pay-By-The-Hour Golf is Both Brilliant and Dangerous

According to a story on Lake News Online, the Lodge of Four Seasons in Missouri is launching a pay-by-the-hour option to their traditional golf pricing model.

On the surface, it seems like a brilliant idea, especially for those of us that pride ourselves on playing faster than average pace of play.  It also is a great way for a golf course to grab extra revenue from those who only fit in an hour’s worth of golf here and there.

And obviously, if you’re the type of golfer that can sneak out for a round during the week, you’d probably jump at the chance to pay an hourly rate.

That being said, imagine you’re a by-the-hour customer and you get stuck behind a Jason-Day-level pace of play golfer.  If golfers already get aggravated for slow-play, imagine if you’re literally being charged by the hour.

It could easily lead to chaos, or worse, violence.

We’ve all heard stories of golfers hitting up on the group ahead to “send a message.”  We’ve also heard stories about how those actions escalated into fisticuffs.  I imagine this model could potentially shorten some players slow-play patience even more-so.

And even if the by-the-hour player skipped a hole or two to bypass the bottleneck, it could still wreak havoc on the courses ability to manage the course.

Now, the course is still making a flat-rate available, and one would hope they plan on giving players a heads-up if by-the-hour is a wash when it comes to savings.  At the very least, they should cap the by-the-hour total at whatever the cost of 18 holes would typically be for that day.

Otherwise, this may be a short-lived plan.