What an Opened Tee Time Actually Costs

The distribution, before any interpretation:

Entry price band	Distinct opened course-dates	Share
Under $50	19	10.4%
$50–$99	69	37.9%
$100–$149	61	33.5%
$150–$199	18	9.9%
$200 and up	15	8.2%

The shape is a working golfer's shape with a famous tail. The centre of the distribution — the $50–$99 and $100–$149 bands, 130 of 182 course-dates between them — is ordinary public and resort golf at ordinary prices: an opened tee time, most of the time, is not a luxury good changing hands, it is a Tuesday foursome that fell through and a Saturday single that cancelled. Under $50 there are 19 course-dates (Desert Willow Golf Course; Kokopelli Golf Club; Stonecreek Golf Club) — municipal-priced inventory hiding inside the same log as the trophies. And then the tail: 15 course-dates at $200 and up, concentrated at Arroyo Golf Club at Red Rock; TPC Las Vegas; TPC Sawgrass - Dyes Valley Golf Course — courses where the opening itself, not the price, is the scarce good, and where a hunter's decision is made before the alert arrives, not after.

One opening, several prices

The second measurement is the one hunters misuse. An opening is not one tee time at one price; it is a run of bookable times on a reopened date, and the run has a price shape of its own. Across the 182 distinct course-dates, the median opening spans $57.50 from its cheapest to its priciest time, the median priciest time is $175 against a median entry of $103.99, and 45 openings (24.7%) span $100 or more — the widest spans $250. The pattern behind the spread is the oldest one in golf pricing: morning times carry the premium, midday and afternoon times discount. Which converts into a concrete hunting rule. If your constraint is the course and the date, the opening's entry price is your price — the cheap end of the run is real inventory, not a teaser. If your constraint is the hour — a dawn tee time before a flight, a Saturday 8 a.m. slot — you are shopping at the top of the spread, and the opening's headline price understates yours by roughly the median spread. Read every golf alert both ways: entry price for flexibility, top-of-spread for the hour you actually want.

What this means by area — briefly, and by reference

Area-level price medians live in where tee times open, computed on the same deduplicated basis and republished at every build; this post does not restate them, because the distribution above is the fact that post lacks. Two joins between the two are worth making here. First, the sub-$100 flow (48.4% of course-dates) is not one cheap area subsidising the table — the band table in that post shows entry medians under $100 in the deepest area (Scottsdale / Phoenix) and near it in Tampa, while Las Vegas's median sits at the top of this distribution's centre. Second, the $200-and-up tail is a Florida-and-desert-resort phenomenon in this window: the courses named above sit in the Ponte Vedra and Las Vegas rows of the area table, which is why those areas can post modest course-date counts and still dominate the price conversation. Price and geography are the same table read two ways; the watch you set should be chosen on both.

The limits, plainly

Prices are the GolfNow/TeeOff channel's listed rates at the moment of detection, before any taxes, cart or booking fees the channel adds at checkout — comparisons inside the log are like-for-like, but your checkout total will be higher than any figure here by the channel's standard additions. The window is one week (Oct 30, 08:50 AM ET – Nov 06, 03:48 AM ET) over eight scanned areas and the courses inside them; rates are seasonal, and a January or July distribution will sit higher at the resort end. Entry price is the cheapest time inside an opening, so a band describes the opening's floor, not its typical booked price — the spread section exists precisely to keep that honest. What survives the caveats: opened tee times are centred on ordinary-priced golf (median entry $103.99; 48.4% under $100 at entry and just 8.2% at $200 and up), the famous-course tail is small and named, and the distance between an opening's cheapest and priciest time is wide enough — a median $57.50 — that flexibility, not speed alone, is what a hunter is paid for.

Frequently asked questions

Last updated 2026-11-05.