Golf Committee proposes group no-show penalty

The Golf Committee is suggesting new rules for group play.

The committee, meeting July 19, unanimously recommended to the Property Owners Association board new rules that would require golf groups provide notification four days in advance and penalize groups that don’t show up, or at least don’t bring the number they said they’d have.

Golf operations director Phillip Wright said that the current rules require a group to guarantee the number of players 24 hours in advance. These players are then put on a tee sheet, he said, and schedules are no longer changed. This gives the club less than a day to rebook those tee times if anything changes. This policy, he said, is resulting in fewer rounds of golf being sold. Those lost tee times, he said, represent lost revenue for the POA.

For example, he said, a group may schedule 32 people, but then 15 show up.

Working more with golf groups, he said, can prove helpful.

“I know that, if you’re the head of a golf group, it is tiresome at best,” he said. “I think we can streamline the process to help them, but at the same time we’re asking them to help us, which in turn helps everyone.”

He’d like to get together with representatives from the village’s golf groups, he said, and discuss these changes.

If problems continue under the new rules, he said, the proposal allows for repercussions. There’s a 10 percent leeway under his proposal, he said, but golf employees may make adjustments for unusual situations. Beyond that, he said, the first offense will result in a written warning.

A second offense, he said, will result in a 20 percent reduction on that group’s booking numbers for three months. If there’s a third offense, he said, the group will be removed from the tee sheet for six months.

Group members may still play, he said, but the group will not be allowed to register for group play.

“It will be a change for all Bella Vista playing golf groups,” Wright said. “But I guess the reason for this is what we’re doing isn’t working.”

POA General Manger Tom Judson said most groups shouldn’t be affected. These rules, he said, are geared toward the small number of groups with which the association has had consistent issues.

“We’re reserving the tee sheet,” he said. “If you’re going to use it, go for it; but if you’re not we need to know, because when you’re not using it, that tee time goes to waste.”

The committee also talked about setting up budget requests for 2018 and recommended against over seeding during the winter.