Tee times at Torrey Pines and Balboa Park golf courses have become increasingly hard to get. Some golfers said hackers are likely using bots to hoover up tee times and then selling them on the secondary market. City officials said they have not found evidence of this.
Among San Diego’s many attributes are its municipal golf courses. Torrey Pines, which is carved into the city’s coastline near La Jolla, is considered one of the most beautiful courses in the country. The Balboa Park Golf Course is another gem, with picturesque holes and views of the downtown skyline.
Lately, however, city residents have found that getting a tee time on one of the taxpayer-funded courses is about as challenging as nabbing tickets to a Taylor Swift concert.
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To be sure, it’s never been easy to get on Torrey Pines, which regularly hosts PGA Tour events. But good tee times for Balboa have also been disappearing for the 41,000 city residents who pay for resident ID cards.
The city’s reservation system makes tee times available at 7 p.m. a week in advance and awards them on a first come, first serve basis. Many golfers report finding a vast majority of tee times vanishing within seconds of logging into the system.
"It's impossible to find a tee time," said San Diego resident and golfer Dave Eligator. "You log in right at 7 p.m. the week prior. You click on the tee time, it's gone. It's the same for Torrey Pines, a similar issue, but Balboa? It's really terrible."
Jay Duchnick, who has played San Diego's municipal courses for 30 years, had the same experience.
"If I delay at all, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, within that first minute, those times will all be gone."
Zachariah Eischen is a golfer who’s worked in the reservation technology field for five years. He said the recent activity indicates that hackers could be breaking into the city’s reservation system and using bots to hoover up tee times, which for those with a resident ID card cost between $24 and $48 at the Balboa 18-hole course, according to the city Parks and Recreation website.
Then, Eischen and others suspect, the times are being sold for much more than the resident rates on the secondary market. But city officials aren’t ready to acknowledge that.
"After talking to more people and reaching out to the city, it just became more like someone is gaming the system and I'm sure they're probably selling these tee times, reselling them like a ticket scalper," Eishchen said.
KPBS also tried to get a tee time at Balboa on a recent weekend. In less than a minute only one late afternoon time was available. On another day, seven hours of tee times were gone within the first minute.
The city of San Diego’s golf division said the squeeze on tee times is mainly due to the "surge in golf’s popularity” since the pandemic, not bots.
The city so far has been "unable to point to compelling evidence that there are third parties that are manipulating the online reservation system and offering tee times outside of the city’s reservation," according to John Howard, the Deputy Director of Golf Operations,
Caleb Olsen, a spokesperson for the department, denied a KPBS request to interview Howard or other city employees about the issue, saying “no one was available for an interview.”
"After talking to more people and reaching out to the city, it just became more like someone is gaming the system and I'm sure they're probably selling these tee times, reselling them like a ticket scalper."Zachariah Eischen, golfer
There's no question that golf's popularity has soared in San Diego. City courses saw a record 420,000 rounds of golf played during the last fiscal year, generating $14 million in profits. Statewide, golf is responsible for an economic impact of $6.3 billion, according to the National Golf Foundation.
Most experts agree that the pandemic was largely responsible for an explosion of interest in golf at a time when COVID-19 restrictions shut down many other recreational activities.
"I'm one of the people who took it up," said San Diegan Dee Rehee. "I know that it's exploded. But the reality is, there's something happening with the tee times. It's becoming increasingly hard to book tee time."
Eischen said he’s seen similar scenarios in other ticket and reservation systems, and the culprits are usually bots. "This is kind of like a textbook bot activity when that many tickets, if you will, are gone in under 5-10 seconds," he said.
San Diego’s system is run by Utah-based foreUP golf reservation software. The city is in the final year of a five-year contract with foreUP. A company spokesperson did not speak directly to what is happening in San Diego, but acknowledged in an email that bot attacks are a common scourge.
"Your inquiry addresses an issue the entire industry is grappling with," the foreUp spokesperson said. The company added that it is looking for a way to "combat this complex issue,” including efforts to “reduce bot interference." In the same email the company suggested some actions that could be done to address the problem, which KPBS provided to the city for their review.
A nationwide problem
Reservation systems are being gamed across the country, said Jay Karen, CEO of the National Golf Course Owners Association, which has 4,000 public and private golf courses as members.
Karen compared the experience to "when concert tickets go up on sale in the local market." What you should chalk it up to, he said, is a growing black market for tee times, with third parties scooping up all the good tee times.
“Someone buys the Saturday morning tee time at 10 a.m. And then they have a secondary platform where they can go and resell it,” Karen said.
Olsen, the city golf department spokesperson, said foreUP works to thwart bots by using CAPTCHA technology, which requires users to click on photos to prove they are human.
"While it is not guaranteed to prevent bots from submitting information online, it significantly reduces the occurrence," Olsen said.
KPBS received records relating to the golf division’s reservation system through a request filed under the California Public Records Act.
Records showed several golfers were investigated for lying when applying for a city card. In one case, a city Parks and Recreation Department employee wrote he was concerned the system erred in not confirming the applicants' identification.
"This happened multiple times on the same day and one of the customers claimed to have paid someone to do this for them," the employee wrote.
As punishment, the golfers lost their privileges, the records showed. Bots were not mentioned in the investigations.
One way for the public to weigh in on golf issues is the Municipal Golf Committee. It serves in an advisory role for the City Council and mayor's office. But records show that the committee rarely meets because it can’t muster a quorum.
Despite having scheduled multiple meetings each year since 2023, members of the committee have met just three times since July 12, 2022, records show. KPBS also found that no agendas were posted on the committee website for a two-year period.
The committee did meet on March 15 and several new volunteer board members were present. However, there was nothing on the committee agenda or any discussion related to the difficulties resident card holders are having securing quality tee times.
Present at the meeting were Howard and Matty Reyes, golf course manager. They both were in attendance at the few meetings that did take place at the time the tee time problems began to surface.
Kurt Carlson, immediate past president of the committee, said the city in the past did not react to complaints about angry golfers who appeared before his committee.
“We heard the stories where players see the tee times quickly disappear before their eyes and it is impossible to get a decent time if any at all," said Carlson, a well-known landscape architect.
The next Municipal Golf Committee is scheduled Thursday evening. The meeting agenda includes an update on tee time access that acknowledges a “demand problem for some users based on their preferences.
The City Golf Operations Division recommends studying several steps that could be taken to address demand, including creating a booking fee for the Balboa and Mission Bay golf courses.
LA story
The city of Los Angeles experienced the same issue beginning in 2023. Kevin Fitzgerald, former chair of the Los Angeles Golf Course Advisory Committee, said he’s not surprised that the two cities would have similar problems.
Both have “green fees that are set at a price that is specifically affordable and accessible,” Fitzgerald said. “So you have the conditions that are ripe for this kind of activity."
At first, Los Angeles ignored the complaints, said Craig Kessler of the California Alliance for Golf. Kessler said Los Angeles reacted "like San Diego until the tee time issue blew up on social media" and "the mayor's office got involved."
Ultimately, angry Los Angeles golfers filed a class action lawsuit against the city, saying it “permitted black market tee-time brokers to buy up and resell tee times for a profit.” According to the lawsuit, golfers "have not received the benefits of affordable tee times as promised by LA city with the purchase of a Player Card."
The suit said the city knew what was happening when they were told in the fall of 2023 but ignored the findings of an investigation alleging that Korean language brokers were taking premium tee times. The city doesn't allow brokers to book times.
The lawsuit named three brokers who used social media and a popular Korean messaging app, KakaoTalk. "These brokers are using macro programs to book multiple tee times at the same time and selling it to people that were unable to book,” the suit said.
A number of the lawsuit allegations were ultimately confirmed, but it took online community buzz and media exposure to draw more attention to the issue.
The lawsuit prompted the Los Angeles Advisory Committee to finally begin an investigation. "There was a sense that maybe there was some kind of bot activity because you have seven 18-hole golf courses and three nine-hole golf courses that would fill up in a minute," Fitzgerald said.
The brokers would beat the system by booking the time and then returning it to the city reservation system in the middle of the night when no one is usually on the website, Fitzgerald said.
“There were tee times that were being canceled at say 2:45 in the morning and then rebooked in a couple of seconds,” he said.
To determine whether the same alleged activity might be happening in San Diego, KPBS filed a request under the California Public Records Act asking the city to provide the surnames of golfers booking premium tee times over several time frames. The city denied the request, saying the information was "attorney-client privilege" and that revealing just the surnames would expose "personal financial data."
The city of Los Angeles finally addressed the problem by charging an upfront $10 reservation fee. If the golfer plays, the fee is applied to the cost of the round. If the golfer cancels, it's non-refundable. The money forfeited goes to a junior golf program the city runs.
Early grumbling about this solution quickly disappeared because it drove the brokers away, Fitzgerald said. It took a year but “after this was implemented, cancellations were down 94%, give or take,” he said.
It’s not been declared a total victory, but it's a major improvement for players at Los Angeles municipal courses, Kessler said.
“So far, this solution is held," he said, "at least until such time as some geniuses with computers figure out how to get around it, I suppose."
