‘DO IT YOURSELF’ GOLF TOURNAMENTS: Just add players
Hey, it’s a big world and someone has to play through it.
And we are not going to be able to cover the planet, so here are a few tips on how to create your own tournament. If you want, you can also get our very cool and very complete Event Production Handbook and Timeline/production schedule.
- YOUR ‘GOLF’ VENUE: Location is everything and the cooler your venue the better. Urban-street and crossgolf events fit perfectly primary, secondary and high school campus and/or just their playing fields. College campuses usually have several places to put in a quick 18 holes. I’ve been to a mountain of corporate parks that I dream of being able to play through. Then, of course, we cannot forget our Disc Golf bretheren with their 1,200 courses nation wide. The AG ball flies about the distance of a frisbee so the ball fits Disc Golf courses like a glove. The goal is to find a venue that has fun variation so you can design a cool course. The more interesting the venue, the more interesting the course possibilities
- COURSE DESIGN: You can design an urbanGolf, StreetGolf, CrossGolf or any kind of Off-Course – Golf Course you want. The only limitation you have is your own creativity. So once you have your venue, get a couple of buddies together and start designing your course. I am a big fan of one club tournaments, so that is what I design around. To create a course through campus to fit a full bag of clubs is kind of nuts. Drivers have no place but on a golf course, at least most of the time. Doing one club events also makes it much easier to design your course. Pick your starting point. Your ‘club house’ and begin seeing where there are cool shots and holes. Your goal is to create a par 3,4 and maybe par 5 holes around campus so that you end up back at the club house.I’m a huge fan of creating a figure 8 design so that players can stop by the clubhouse for a frosty beverage at their halfway point.It’s also important to note that your course doesn’t need to be 18 holes or even ascribe to traditional golf rules. Remember, it’s your course, your event so…have at it. Get creative. You can mix up long holes with putting down staircase holes to hitting a short shot up onto a balcony holes….and beyond!When figuring out where to put your holes, always look for cool ‘greens’ and targets to hit for. They can be fire hydrants, light posts or mail boxes or our very cool Off-Course Inflatable targets. If you find some cool places like parking lots (parking lot pool) (video) or areas that you can actually putt, bring on the putters.You definitely need to play the course several times to ‘burn it in’ and figure out how it will fit together so that you create the coolest holes you can, while having them connect from one to another and finally end up at your clubhouse. It’s a kind of super creative golf puzzle you are trying to put together designed for maximal hole coolness combined with hole to hole convenience. The worst thing you can create is a course where people can’t follow it and get lost.If you are looking at a daytime event, you could look at getting some eco-friendly field paint and paint up some greens and fairways. Also, if you are creating your event to make money for your organization or school, you can sell Tee box, fairway and green sponsorships where you paint their logo or ‘shout out’ thank you in field paint.
- PICK A DATE: Once you feel happy with your course, or while your course design team is busy creating the course, pick a date for your event. Remember that night golf events make it a whole lot easier to get people to come out because no one is working and they are all looking for something cool, fun and GLOWING to do…but day time events are great too.
- PLAYERS: This is the fun part. Start inviting everyone you know. If you are a school and you want to either raise money for a cause of just be organized, check out our online registration engine. It’s cheap, easy to set up and will allow your players to register at home and even send out donation requests online.It’s pretty straight forward getting players. In a school, contact all the teams, clubs and organizations that need an event to raise money for. If you are in college, contact the Greek community. They will fill your field in a minute, especially for a night golf event.
- EVENT SET-UP: Setting up your event all depends on how complicated you’ve made your course. If your course is made up of just targets and tee boxes, you should be able to put your course together in a few hours. This is what makes night courses so cool. Since the sizzle is in the ball, all you need are some glow targets, glow gear and you can put your course together in an hour.For more advanced courses where you are painting holes and creating something really cool by bringing in carpeting for greens etc. then you should give yourself a little more time to set up. We’ve spent a full day painting some courses.(Check out our video below. The Pali Golf’n Dolphin Challenge had a serious paint job)
- BELLS AND WHISTLES: If you really want to have a bash, you have to have music. Remember, your tournament isn’t being created around a 150 acre golf course where everyone is off doing their thing a half a mile away from everyone else. You are creating a course that is tight, social and made for tunes. You could even have music is a few places, where the players are stopping to snag a snack of frosty beverage at several parties along the courses route.
- NEEDED GOLF GEAR: To produce an urbangolf, streetgolf or crossgolf event, you’ll need balls, mats and targets. That is the bare bones. If want to get fancy you can put in water hazards and greens, or go glow and get some very cool glow sticks to light up your course as well as UV headlamps and florescent paint to light up your players and course.
LEARN MORE: This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to course and event design. So check out our course design and event design blog entries for more details, or you can spend a little green and buy our Event production handbook and timeline. This is our core dump of everything we know about how to put on a successful off-course event for either fun or to raise money for charity. It’s only @#$@# and well worth every dollar.
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