With more than 3 million rounds sold in the Myrtle Beach area last year, golf courses tend to be pretty busy during the Grand Strand’s peak season. When you come during those high-volume times (fall and spring), golf courses are doing everything in their power to make sure you have a great Myrtle Beach golf experience. One of things you will see many of them do at those peak times is “double tee” the course.
Double teeing refers to when a golf course will send groups simultaneously off the 1st and 10th tees for the first two hours of the day. Courses with a morning double tee will typically send groups off the 1st and 10th tees from approximately 7:45-9:45 a.m., and then not send any tee times out at all from 9:45 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Many courses that double tee in the early morning will do so again to kick off the afternoon session.
Double teeing helps courses in two ways. For one, it gives them the ability to better control pace of play. If there is a group slowing up one side, it won’t affect the course for the entire day, including the afternoon.
Second, double teeing allows the course to maximize the number of desirable tee times it can make available to its visiting golfers. Late-morning tee times at “single-tee” courses often go unfilled, as golfers who wish to start their round closer to midday will simply wait until the afternoon when rates often drop. On a double-teed course, golfers playing morning rounds will simply be crossing over to play their back nine holes during that late-morning time.
When you play a golf course that is double teeing, they will typically tell you before you tee off. It’s especially important to note this if you’re one of the first tee times of the day, with the intention of breezing through 18 holes at a rapid pace. If you complete your first nine extremely quickly – say, in 90 minutes after a 7:45 a.m. tee off – you may have to wait a bit to start your back nine. But once the last of the morning tee times has gone off (again, typically no later than 9:45 a.m.), you’re then free to play your back nine. And if you wind up with a few extra minutes in between your front and back nines, it presents a great time for a clubhouse pit stop.
One other note: The courses where you won’t find double teeing are those where the front and back nines do not start and end at the clubhouse. Courses like Wild Wing Plantation’s Avocet course and Myrtlewood Golf Club’s Palmetto course fit this description, and as such offer late-morning tee times in peak season that most courses do not.
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