Mulligans?
The dreaded Mulligan. Should you be selling them? If so, how many per player? How much should you charge? How many people will buy them? Are they even worth it?
Everyone reading this is hoping for a 4 or 4.5 hour round. Yeah, that’s not happening. Sorry.
The golf part of your outing will take 5 to 5.5 hours and maybe more if you allow your guests to stop for lunch or have a BBQ cookout on the course somewhere.
Now we get back to the “big decision” of your committee on Mulligans.
Thumbs up? Thumbs down? You ask; “Jerry, what do you think, you were at the outing last year?”
Jerry says, “I think players like them, let’s do it.”
Personally, it cracks me up when I see people stumble up to the registration table and they are asked the question… “Has anyone from the Anderson foursome checked in yet?” Your greeter says, “nope, you are the first… would you like to buy any Mulligans?” Then you get the quizzical look and reply, “I should probably wait and see what my group wants to do. ” Like that matters at all! Either YOU want mulligans or YOU don’t.
Here is the math. Every single mulligan adds, at the very least 1.5 minutes to each players round. Actually more like 2.5 minutes as most use it either for lining up a putt that they swear broke less than the 2″ they allowed for or a new tee shot on a par 3. Oddly this guy NEVER has an extra ball or even a tee in his pocket and will have to walk back down to his cart to get each out of two different pockets in his golf bag and change his club as long as he is there. Brace yourself if it is a waterhole and he has to search for a ball that is more expendable, just in case he didn’t get any better at the game than he was 3 minutes ago. Either way, you are now adding 4 extra minutes to this groups round to use only one mulligan.
So, if every player gets 5 mulligans, you have added between 30 minutes and 80 minutes to just that one group. You event is now looking at 6.5 hours on the course and EVERYONE, including the Chef making dinner for everyone is upset!
In reality, not everyone will spend that $10 for mulligans either, so your expected windfall of cash certainly isn’t worth the extra time in the sun and upset “dinner only” guests. Remember, golfers will hit extra balls and cheat anyway. It’s just a fun day of golf. All you have to do is simply add $20 to the cost to play in the event to everyone. EVERYONE who is there is actually paying it so you instantly have 100% particpation, didn’t slow down check-in and you made far more money than if you sold mulligans. Oh, and the round is faster anyway… Just let Jerry hit a second tee shot on that par 3, he will anyway.