By Harvey Silverman, Contributor, Golf Business | Silverback Golf Marketing
I began my career as a golf business journalist (a title I bestowed on myself) in 2010, one of the founders of Pellucid Perspective. I was tasked with writing one article each month, and I thought, “Where am I going to find stories each month that interest me and will interest and inform readers?” I soon found out that stories of all shapes and subjects literally fell out of the sky into my purview and continue to. Here’s my recap of the top stories I tracked in 2025.
By any measure, 2025 was a year when the business of golf faced new challenges, experiencing everything from courtroom drama, tee-time pilfering, costly no-shows and chargebacks, a faux benchmarking service, an ongoing controversy over how much sunshine the industry prefers, and more, adding new layers to the complex job of operating a successful and profitable golf facility.
January opened with the kind of story that sounds great in a keynote slide: Google adding tee times to its search results, promising frictionless booking for golfers who once juggled multiple tabs and phone calls just to get off the first tee. Unbeknownst to thousands of golf courses, the tee time booking button had been placed on their Google Business Profile page by a major third party, directing golfers to the third-party tee time marketplace – not directly to the course website. Alarm bells went off, and NGCOA stepped in to learn more and educate Google itself (imagine that), and its members about best practices.
The vision was a centralized “tee times near me” world where golfers see real‑time availability, prices, and reviews in a single search, while courses gain more visibility and higher occupancy if they install the “Big Blue Button” on their Google Business Profile page that leads directly to their website’s tee time booking engine. Of course, it required GMS and tee sheet providers to cooperate. Some did immediately, others have been slow to the party.
More recently, Apple added tee time availability to Apple Maps and other Apple apps. It doesn’t require cooperation from the GMS or tee sheet company. Apple prefers to work directly with the course, which must first establish ownership of a profile page similar to Google’s.
The annual Golf Business Conference gathering in Orlando showed that in the trenches, life was far messier than Google’s neat UX. Operators debated permanent Daylight Saving Time, senior rates that keep inching toward age 70, and dynamic pricing engines that still spook some owners even as three‑quarters admitted they’re using them—with rate caps firmly in place.
That same conference also previewed some of the year’s recurring headaches: card‑surcharge rules and how your software reacts, sketchy lawsuits over ladies’ promotions, and a new wave of third‑party tee time resellers surfacing under the radar. The mood was equal parts “we’ve seen everything” and “we definitely haven’t.”
Serious benchmarking players—Greenlight Advisors, Pellucid and Edgehill—were held up as the folks who spent careers grinding through weather, utilization, and RevPAR spreadsheets. Then an unsolicited email landed from Foresee Golf claiming benchmarking for “over 2,500 courses” and waving around KPIs like ADR and RevPAR as if they grew on trees.
The tells came fast: misspellings, no unsubscribe link, an AI‑generated golfer image with tee markers that would make any superintendent cry, and a “National Benchmark Report” that could not decide whether ADR was 66.78 dollars or “near 61,” and RevPAR 31.69 dollars or “around 33.” When a benchmarking company can’t benchmark its own numbers, trust evaporates. Within a couple of months, Foresee disappeared.
Like a major earthquake, an email hit my inbox with explosive force from an NGCOA member and a large multi-course operator (MCO). It had just experienced a $43,000 loss due to no-shows created by a third party that reserved multiple weekend tee times at a prestigious California coastal facility, hoping to resell them for a profit, and nobody took the bait. It piggybacked on other third-party efforts in Southern California and New York state to capitalize on surging demand for tee times, all in the name of generating illicit profits from someone else’s product – golf course tee times.
The plea from the MCO to NGCOA was, “Can you do something about this?” And so it was that NGCOA CEO Jay Karen called this writer with an idea: let’s gather stakeholders across the industry to discuss golf operators’ number one asset – tee times. I accepted the position of “project manager,” and thus began what became the first-ever Golf Tee Time Summit, held in October, the day before the already scheduled Technology Conference (TechCon25). Much will be forthcoming about the four pillars that 72 people, balanced among course operators, technology providers, and subject-matter experts, took the time and money to discuss: tee times, no-shows/short-shows/cancellations, merchant processing, and artificial intelligence. I can say with great pride that the intelligence in the room that day was not artificial.
Alas, there was some justice meted out to tee time perpetrators. A federal indictment in California revealed that twin brothers running a tee time brokering operation had earned nearly 700,000 dollars between 2021 and 2023, reselling public tee times, often in violation of municipal rules. They funneled money through Venmo, Zelle, and personal accounts, then spent freely on a Hawaii timeshare, luxury cars, and high‑end retail while failing to report more income.
For anyone still wondering whether unauthorized tee-time brokerage was a rounding error, the number—700,000 dollars from one operation—answered the question. It also accelerated conversations around name, image, and likeness issues for golf courses, bots scraping booking engines, and the need for LA‑style policies—nonrefundable deposits, cancellation penalties, and tighter access controls—to shut down arbitrage schemes.
Meanwhile, the ETS story that began years earlier finally reached a legal conclusion: after two mistrials, Vaughan and Akkad pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy-to-commit-fraud count, agreeing to forfeit $7.63 million in cash but avoiding prison in exchange for 36 months of probation. Too harsh or not harsh enough? You decide.
The plea deal allowed the men to keep an eye‑popping portfolio of real estate, vehicles, and aircraft, while forfeiting cash and paying fines and restitution to the City of Sherman, Texas. For NGCOA members, it was closure of a sort, backed by an FBI message that emphasized the agency’s commitment to victims and the long, grinding pursuit of a fraud case through setbacks, mistrials, and ultimately a negotiated resolution. Restitution is due to the victims, and NGCOA Senior Director of Advocacy Ronnie Miles awaits information on how the money will be distributed. For NGCOA members who had filled out FBI forms as far back as 2016, it was a reminder that justice in payments land moves at glacial speed.
If there was one unifying pain point for owners in 2025, it was the humble chargeback—the kind tagged “services not provided” after a foursome very much played 18 holes. An Accelerate thread on the topic was fueled by stories of customers who swore they knew nothing about the dispute, prompting experts to explain that codes like 10.5 or 93 tell you who really initiated the charge and that cardholders are almost always notified. In other words, the term “friendly fraud” remained accurate, but not very friendly.
The practical response was a checklist that would make any lawyer nod: clearly posted cancellation and no‑show policies, digital acknowledgment of terms, detailed receipts, tight documentation of check‑ins and play, and quick, evidence‑packed responses to disputes. Sample templates and terms suggested everything from including security footage in dispute packets to adding “no ‘services not provided’ chargebacks” language to on‑site and online agreements.
Golf’s new star of C-SPAN is NGCOA CEO Jay Karen, who carried golf’s torch, and all outdoor recreation, to testify in front of Senate and Congressional committees about the Sunshine Act, which has been languishing on Capitol Hill for over two years. The issue is “locking the clock” to stop one-hour time changes made twice each year, which is highly favored. On one side are the supposedly sleep-deprived who favor permanent Standard Time, because, dang it, human evolution has locked in place our circadian rhythms and we’ll never adjust to the alternative – permanent Daylight Saving Time. Karen astutely testified that more golfers play at 5 PM than at 5 AM, and, armed with detailed data from Pellucid, reported on the billions of dollars lost if Standard became the standard. In fact, all outdoor recreation would be adversely affected and reduced if the sun set an hour earlier in the spring, summer, and fall months. The cultural ramifications are enormous.
Jay’s walk-up tune at GBC will be “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles.
And, finally, AI. It was extensively discussed at the Tee Time Summit, both in the room and at the bar. Bots are multiplying as websites did in 1995, at the dawning of the Internet. Perfection is a dream, not a reality. On many levels, we’re in a holding pattern to see what and who successfully emerges from what most experts agree is an “AI bubble.” Golf is losing landmass as exorbitant funds buy up golf courses, including municipal courses, to build massive, energy- and water-sucking data centers to support and expand the computing power necessary. I’m old enough to think that I won’t see the full manifestation of the artificial world, but I instructed my family to place on my headstone, “It’s real. I’m dead.”
Looking back, 2025 quietly handed operators a checklist of its own:
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Understand where your tee times really live—on your site, on Google, or in someone else’s bot.
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Harden your defenses against chargebacks and unauthorized resellers with policies, documentation, and technology, not just hope.
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Embrace fun formats and community‑driven events that remind golfers why they love the game.
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15% of your business depends on one of two outcomes – either maintain the current clock-changing twice a year, or standardize to permanent Daylight Saving Time.
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"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine." If you were an ETS victim, stay tuned for a restitution resolution.
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Make sure your tee times live on Google and Apple.
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AI will help drive your business, or drive you nuts.
I hope to see you all in Orlando.