From the outside, a golf day looks simple. Book a course, send an invite, turn up. Anyone who has actually organised one knows it eats weeks, usually in fifteen minute chunks squeezed between everything else.
So where does all that time go?
It starts a year before anyone notices
Good courses on good summer dates go around a year ahead. That means the first job, picking a date, has to happen long before anyone in the business is thinking about golf. Miss that window and you're choosing between a wet Tuesday in April and a course nobody wants to play.
Everything waits on something else
You can't send invites until you've got a date. You can't order kit until you know numbers. You can't draw up the tee sheet until the teams are in, and the teams are never all in. A golf day is a long chain of small jobs, and most of them are waiting on the one before.
Most of it is chasing people
Team names. Handicaps. Dietary requirements. Who's coming, who's dropped out, who's sending a replacement and whether the replacement eats fish. Every team has a captain, every captain has a day job, and there is always one team that sends its names the night before.
The jobs you don't think of until it's late
Branded kit and tee box signs have lead times, so they need ordering months out. A pro needs booking for Beat the Pro. Auction lots need asking for, usually more than once. Sponsors need finding, then invoicing, then thanking. Catering needs final numbers by a date that always arrives sooner than expected.
Each one is small. Together they add up to a part-time job.
Then there's the day itself
Someone has to be there before the first car, run registration, brief the players, keep the bar cart moving, keep the scores up to date, count the money, run the auction and hand out the prizes. That someone usually holds the clipboard, and is the one person who never gets to enjoy it.
And it doesn't end in the car park
Thank yous, photos, sponsor follow-ups, announcing what you raised, and notes for next year. Most organisers are so relieved it's over that this bit gets skipped, which is a shame, because it's what people remember.
Who ends up doing it
Rarely an events planner. Usually someone in marketing, sales or the office who has been handed it on top of everything else. Someone good at their actual job, now spending evenings emailing golf clubs about car parking and breakfast numbers.
The short version
A golf day takes so long because it's dozens of small jobs, most of them waiting on other people, spread across a whole year. None of them is hard. There are just a lot of them.
And that's for an average golf day. Who actually sets out to put on an average, forgettable event?
The alternative
Hand it to Fairways For Good. Our days cost 28% less than organising one yourself, and that's before you count the hours your team would have spent on it. They also raise up to 40% more for charity.
You pick the date and bring your teams. We do the rest.
Plan your day