Course manager
How to publish course status and notices
By Caddyio · Updated
Course communication fails for a boring reason: the same message has to be typed into the app, the website, a noticeboard and a WhatsApp group, so one of them is always wrong. Fix it by publishing once, from a single source, and by being precise about scope — a temporary green on the 7th is not a closed course, and members stop reading notices from a club that treats them the same.
- Separate closure from disruption Three states cover almost everything: the course is open, the course is open but something is disrupting play, or the course is closed. Hole-level work is disruption, not closure. Clubs that call every coring week a closure train members to ignore the banner.
- Say which holes are affected "Greens being cored" tells a member nothing about whether to drive over. "Holes 4, 5 and 12 on temporary greens" tells them everything. Scope every notice to the holes it actually affects, or to the whole course when it genuinely is.
- Put dates on it A start and an end date means the notice appears when the work starts and disappears when it finishes, without anybody remembering to take it down. Notices left up after the work is done are the main reason members stop trusting them.
- Publish to the round, not just the noticeboard The moment a member needs to know about the temporary green on the 7th is when they are standing on the 7th tee. A notice that only exists in the clubhouse is a notice most of the field never sees.
- Let members report back Your greenstaff cannot be everywhere. Members will tell you about a washed-out bunker or a broken marker post if reporting it takes ten seconds from where they are standing — with a photo and a location, so nobody has to guess which bunker.
- Close the loop A report that vanishes teaches the member not to bother. Acknowledge, fix, and mark it done — the visible cycle is what keeps reports coming.
Frequently asked
- How should a golf club tell members the course is closed?
- Once, from a single source that feeds the member app, the website and the first tee. Retyping the same message into several places is why one of them is always out of date and why members stop believing any of them.
- Is a temporary green a course closure?
- No. Hole-level work is disruption; the course is still open. Treating every coring week as a closure trains members to ignore your notices, which is a problem on the day you really are shut.
- How do we stop old notices hanging around?
- Put an end date on every notice when you write it, so it removes itself when the work finishes rather than relying on somebody remembering.
In Caddyio, greenkeeping notices published by staff appear on the member's round screen, scoped to the holes they affect and dated so they expire themselves — and the same notices drive a course-status widget you can embed on the club's own website, so it is written once.