Battle against bots swiping tee times is in full swing 

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Golf is hard enough, but getting a tee time on some popular public courses might be the toughest part of the round, even before that first ball is shanked into the woods.  

More than 2,000 public golf courses across the country, including the five courses at Bethpage State Park, use a booking platform called foreUP for golfers to reserve tee times. But the system has been vulnerable to bots that exploit the software and gobble up the precious reservations, which are then sold at a premium. 

A new bill introduced in both the New York State Assembly and Senate by Long Island elected officials would crack down on people using bots that manipulate an online reservations platform to grab tee times from golfers at public courses. 

The bill sponsored by Assemblyman Edward Ra, who represents Long Island’s 19th Assembly District, and State Sen. Anthony Palumbo, who represents the 1st Senate District, would enact the “Blocking Illegitimate Reservations and Defending Individual Entertainment (BIRDIE) Act” to prohibit third-party reservation services from listing, advertising, promoting or selling reservations for state-owned golf courses. The measure would also provide money received from penalties to be deposited in the state’s golf fund. 

Ra said the bill was fashioned after the Restaurant Reservation Anti-Piracy Act that Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law in Dec. 2024, which prohibits third-party restaurant reservation services from arranging unauthorized reservations. 

“It was clear people are gaming the system,” Ra told LIBN. “This gives the Parks Department more teeth to make sure that people aren’t using these bots to take key times and especially to profit off of them when it comes to a public facility that taxpayers pay for.” 

Another bot battler is attorney Nathan Baum of the Dallas-based Norton Rose Fulbright law firm, who is representing New York golfer Eric Bengyak in his fight against the flaws in the reservation system. In a letter to foreUP and its parent firm Cincinnati, Ohio-based Clubessential Holdings LLC, Baum contends that tee times at public courses are disappearing within seconds of becoming available seven days in advance. In addition, hundreds of non-resident accounts are securing tee times at the famed Bethpage Black course beyond the stated five-day restriction and only about 40 percent of tee times booked seven days in advance are actually played, which he says is an unusually low number for such a highly sought-after course. 

“Bots and brokers are using a shotgun approach to book multiple tee times per day using verified accounts, then cancelling the tee times if they cannot be sold or played,” Baum wrote to the company. “Even for rounds that are cancelled, foreUP software is allowing cancellation bots to run rampant to instantly snag those tee times away from the general public as well.”  

In response, Danyella Waddell, a marketing and communications executive with Clubessential Holdings, said the company is aware of the issue that “the entire industry is grappling with and one on which foreUP is working closely with the National Golf Course Owners Association.” She said the company is working with its customers to implement strategies that include requiring that users provide valid credit card details at the time of booking; requiring prepayment online when booking a tee time; introducing a non-refundable booking fee to further commit users to their reservations; and delayed tee-time cancellation to prevent the cancelled tee time from being able to be booked again immediately. 

About 300,000 rounds are played each year at the five Bethpage State Park courses and with the Ryder Cup returning to the Black Course in September, Baum said the timing to fix the tee-time problem is critical, as the complex will be drawing significant attention. 

The attorney said Clubessential Holdings has a responsibility to fix the bot problem plaquing the foreUP system. 

“Bethpage State Park golf courses are the crown jewel of public golf in America,” Baum wrote. “New York taxpayers are funding and protecting Bethpage…Yet, New York State residents cannot obtain their fair share of tee times…”