Shmooker
Mar 02 2012, 04:51 AM
tournaments are filling up before i can get in. everybody says register early but how do i know when registration begins? is there a standard length of time between tourney date and registration start date?

jconnell
Mar 02 2012, 08:36 AM
tournaments are filling up before i can get in. everybody says register early but how do i know when registration begins? is there a standard length of time between tourney date and registration start date?
No standard length of time that I'm aware of. For the most part, I think tournament directing is still a fly by the seat of the pants operation. By that I mean, flyers get made up and registration opens whenever it is convenient for the TD to do so. Not saying that's a bad thing at all, it's just that even tournaments that have been run for years on/around the same date by the same person(s) don't necessarily have a consistent schedule by which it runs. One year, registration opens six months out, the next it opens one month out. It's just a part of being a largely volunteer effort.

Best advice is to figure out where these tournaments are most likely to be advertised/announced (websites/message boards, social media, email lists) and monitor those places closely. There has to be an online element of some kind involved for these tournaments to be filling so fast. In other words, this isn't a case of a solitary flyer going up at the bulletin board by tee one and the tournament filling up the next day, leaving the folks who go to the course two days after the flyer goes up SOL. Word is obviously getting out somewhere, you just have to figure out where that word is going to be put out and be there too.

ishkatbible
Mar 02 2012, 10:12 AM
i just started running event registrations on my site. and the td's have had a recommended date for opening them up. i post the estimated date and time on my facebook, and have had a couple of people seem to be waiting for them. for example, the last 2 events i said "x-date at x-time" and they have been open about an hour or two early. and i had 4 entries before the "x-time". my guess is people that have heard about the promotion have just been hitting "refresh" untill they see it open.

my suggestion is find the td and ask. then, sit and wait with your finger on the refresh button. sounds like a pain but that's what i've been doing myself, and have never been shut out because an event has filled. i'm always one of the first signed up.

Shmooker
Mar 02 2012, 07:11 PM
Thanks a bunch! I'll treat the registration more like an e-bay bid and keep tabs more often on the ones i want to play in.

davidsauls
Mar 03 2012, 09:32 PM
All of this varies widely from event to event. Not that many events fill up quickly, though they may be the ones you've wanted to enter.

There's no harm in contacting the TD as soon as you know about the event, and asking when registration begins and/or where it will be announced.

For example, for the Earlewood Classic, one of the fastest-filling events (a matter of minutes), we announce the time of registration about a week in advance. We do this on our webpage, our facebook page, and as many discussion groups as we can. Club members may get emails or text messages.

For Stoney Hill tournaments, it's more as JConnell described. Registration begins whenever we finish the flyer, hopefully about 6 weeks in advance. We make the same announcements, and send emails to people in our email database.