Alternating Paired Twosomes

An alternate routing format for 9 hole courses.

Here’s an idea that is kind of ridiculous, but could actually work.

I regularly play at Gleneagles GC at Mclaren Park in San Francisco. It’s a 9 hole course, with two sets of tees, so that it plays 18 holes total, even though there are only 9 greens. The problem on this course is that it’s impossible to play 18 when it’s busy. They send people out in groups for 9 hole rounds. You could book two separate rounds, but you have to guess what time your second round will be. Unfortunately, due to standard variance in pace-of-play speeds, guessing this time is effectively impossible, and to safely pick a time with a healthy buffer, you might have an incredibly long delay. Now, the course would happily send people out for 18 holes, but due to this timing constraint, it’s effectively impossible. However, I believe I’ve found a system that could work.

Let’s call this idea “alternating paired twosomes.” Effectively, the course would only book twosomes, for all tee times throughout the day. However, at the turn, one twosome is grouped a second twosome (that booked a later starting tee time), and the group goes around again, as a foursome. That is, when you finish your first nine holes, you’re grouped with a twosome that’s just starting, but you’re on your back nine. Almost every group will play in a foursome the entire round, it’s just they will get new playing partners at the turn. 

That’s it. Alternating paired twosomes. Most people will never be in a solo twosome. They’ll just start their day paired up with an earlier twosome starting their back nine.

Even if it seems completely ridiculous, and even if it’s unlikely anyone would take the time to implement it, it should work. It really should work and it could work perfectly. Early morning groups go around as twosomes, then after they finish the front nine, they just enter a line to take the next available tee time. If everything is working like clockwork, everything should match up, and you should go straight to the back nine immediately. Of course everything won’t work like clockwork, so let’s see what happens when things don’t go perfectly.

If pace of play is a bit slow, the club can trivially send off solo twosomes as twosomes. Naively, since play is slow, injecting a series of twosomes, playing as twosomes, should alleviate these slowdowns. Since twosomes play dramatically faster on the tee and on the greens, they should fill the gap, without adding any delay to pace.

There may be a wait to tee off if the pace is extremely slow, but you’re just pairing up foursomes as they would play if only groups of foursomes played anyway. If this happens and a line forms for player pairing up for their back nine, they will know how long that line is before they need to be ready, and can get refreshments or food, but they certainly wouldn’t be slower through 18 than they would be if it were just foursomes on an equivalent day. 

However, if the pace of play is too fast at the turn, a line for the back nine will also form. Players will know they have time to purchase refreshments in the interim, which shouldn’t be long. If there is ever a place to wait in golf, it’s at a warming hut or the clubhouse.

For the vast majority of nine hole courses, this process, while convoluted, could be executed seamlessly. For Gleneagles at McLaren, the only complicating factor is that you would have to alternate front and back nines. As it stands on that course, the yellow tees are the front nine, and the blue tees are the back nine, but if you’re alternating twosomes, the starting twosome would play the yellow tees on their front nine. Then, the middle twosome would play the blue tees as their front nine while the starting twosome play them as their back nine. Finally, the middle twosome would play their back nine on the yellow tees, while a third twosome plays the same yellow tees as their front nine. 

You’d lose some potential tee times in the morning and the evening, but they could simply be sold as a nine hole round at a discount.

The system is kind of ridiculous and could be inscrutable until players are used to it. Groups would probably want to jump ahead, or play with their friends, or some other behavior that could definitely lead to backups. I’m sure some twosomes would insist on playing one set of tees first, regardless of which set the group they get paired with already played. Look, it might just lead to chaos, but honestly, it might actually work. I would at least like to see it tried.

This is the blog from the creator of golfcourse.wiki. If you like the content, join the wiki and add your course.