The day you’ve worked long and hard for has finally come, Tournament Day. This will actually be the easiest part of the whole Golf Tournament process. A helpful tool for planning of your Tournament Day, would be to create a small scale timeline for yourself. This will be helpful for all those involved by keeping everyone informed of plans for the day.
Based upon your Tournament start time, checking players in for the tournament should begin approximately 2 hours before tee off time. A couple of volunteers would help expedite this and would free the Tournament Director up for checking last minute items. Items that you will need at registration would be alpha listing of players, starting hole assignments, where golf carts are setup for tournament, tee gift(s), competition makers if applicable, scorecards (most Host golf courses will provide these and may have them on golf carts already), and rules sheets. During the registration period, the Tournament Director and or Club President should be there to welcome the players and thank them for participating in the tournament. Make sure during the registration process that each player has provided you personal contact information. We will address this partmore in the next section. Once checked-in, the players can visit the driving range to warm-up before play. Approximately 10-15 minutes prior to tee time off time, the Tournament Director in coordination with the Host Golf Course should start getting all of the players into their respective golf carts. Also during these last few minutes, registration should be finishing up and any last minute shuffling of groups needs to take place in the event of no-shows. Once all the players are in their golf carts, the Tournament Director or Club President should provide welcoming comments, announcements and go over the rules of play for the day. A typical tournament round of golf will take in the neighborhood of 5 to 5 ½ hours to play depending on field size and course difficulty. Make sure to figure that into your timeline. A couple things to keep in mind, if the Tournament Director is playing in the event it is important that someone be in charge of putting out the tournament prizes for the reception, silent/live auction items are displayed, ensuring after tournament dinner preparations are arranged, microphone/podium is available. Once the groups start coming in off of the golf course, the scoring of the tournament begins. Some golf courses will have a staff member available to help with this, but in most circumstances it will be up to the Tournament Director or designee to calculate the results. You should be prepared with score sheets posted so that the playerscan see the scores as they are posted. The Host facility should have score sheets for your use. There are some tech savvy golf courses that will have video displays to display the scores. As the scorecards are coming in, be cognizant of getting the competition markers off of the golf course as well. Now, depending on what you have planned for the evening events lunch/dinner can start as the players come in off of the course or if you’re having a cocktail reception before dinner that should be ongoing. Another opportunity for you to raise some money would be to have a silent auction during this period. This would the players to look over various donated items that you might have and to bid on them. Or a more exciting way to do this if time permits, is to have a live auction later in the evening. Selling raffle tickets or doing a 50/50 (half of the pot goes to the winner, half goes to the organization) drawings are also possibilities. After all scores are posted and then winners are tabulated, your dinner program should begin. The timeline you created for the day will dictate how you should proceed. Your post-tournament program should not last any longer than 2 hours. Keep things moving along, and stick as close to your timeline as possible. The Tournament Director should be directing the flow. A nice touch for you event would be to have plaques made for any Tournament Sponsors and recognize them during your program. Allocate time for the Club President to thank the participants and shake the winner’s hands as they come forward to accept their prizes. This should be the very last thing you do on your agenda for the evening. If not, the participants will leave prior to your program being complete. The completion of the Golf Tournament becomes your eleventh success point.