Already annoyed this morning.
Dog woke me up at 5:10 AM. Which, frankly, is only 20-35 minutes earlier than usual, but still. Hoped I could just take him out to potty and go back to bed, but 5 minutes later he was whining again to get up.
So I thought, fine... At least this will allow me to try to get some tee times for next Sunday, because you can only book a week out.
First grabbed my backup time at my local 18 hole executive. Positive was I was able to get a favorable time (8:40) for 4, and it's easy to cancel, so if nothing else I'll be playing. Negative is that it's only a 3600 yard course, is fairly boring, and I've played there every other week for the last 3 outings, so I'm a little tired of it. I wanted to find a full-length course.
I'd heard good things about the San Clemente municipal course. Checking their web site yesterday morning, I realized they don't open the next week's tee times up until 6 AM on the dot. So I refresh at exactly 6 on the dot and... First tee time available is after 1:00 PM. Little chance of finishing 18 this time of year, and it screws up my entire Sunday instead of just taking the morning. I guess the earlier times are only available to San Clemente residents to be booked a week ahead, which is fine as it's a muni course, but it would be nice if they told me that. It looks like they open them up wider 2-3 days prior to the target date, but that doesn't offer much planning.
So option 3 was a reasonable public course in Costa Mesa. I get onto their website, and boom, see a foursome available at 8:58 AM. Perfect! Try to register for an account... Can't register as it says I already have one for my email address--which would have been a decade+ ago, but ok. Go to the "forgot password" thing. Get my password reset, go back, and despite that only about 90 seconds had passed, they hadn't held my tee time and it's already gone, as is anything else before noon. Okay, so that's screwed... I go take the dog for a walk, get back, and see that a 7:41 has opened up, for 1 person. Try to get logged in and reserve it, and the web site waits, and waits, and waits, and it's gone.
It's hard enough to find an affordable course in Orange County to begin with, but dammit not having decent web sites or transparent tee time policies is annoying af.
