Shotgun start vs consecutive tee times: which suits your golf day
One gets everyone finishing together; the other needs no course closure and is usually all a club will give you. How to choose, and how to run each properly.
Updated 30 July 2026 · 5 min read · Flagstick team
Two ways to send a field out. They produce very different days, and the choice is usually made by what the club will sell you rather than by preference — but it is worth knowing which you actually want before you ask.
Side by side
| Shotgun start | Consecutive tee times | |
|---|---|---|
| How it starts | All groups tee off simultaneously, one per hole | Groups leave the 1st at fixed intervals |
| Field size | Up to 4 per hole × 18 holes | Limited by the tee window |
| Everyone finishes | Within ~15 minutes | Spread over 2–3 hours |
| Course access needed | Exclusive, usually a half or full day | A block of tee times |
| Typical cost | Higher — the club loses other play | Lower |
| Suits | Corporate days, charity days, captain’s day, scrambles | Weekly society rounds, leagues, roll-ups |
| Live leaderboard | Comparable throughout — everyone is on the same hole count | Needs a “thru” column to make sense |
When a shotgun is worth it
Everybody eats together. This is the real reason. If there is a meal, a presentation, an auction or a sponsor’s speech, a shotgun means the whole field arrives at it at once. With tee times, your first group has been in the bar for two and a half hours by the time the last group finishes, and half of them have gone home.
The format is a scramble or a team event. Scrambles are social by design and the day is the point.
You have a full field and a narrow window. A shotgun gets 72 players out in one go. Tee times need three hours of tee sheet for the same field.
Sponsors are involved. A shotgun makes a photograph possible, and a sponsor who paid for the day would like one.
Open competitions are the exception: they nearly always run on consecutive tee times off two tees, which changes how the leaderboard has to read — see live leaderboards for club opens.
When tee times are better
It is a regular society round. Weekly and monthly competitions do not justify closing a course, and no club will close one for you 25 times a season.
The field is small. Under 30 players, a shotgun leaves half the course empty and you have paid for it.
Cost matters. A shotgun means the club sells the course once instead of many times, and prices accordingly.
Players want flexibility. Some members can only play early, some only late. Tee times let you accommodate that; a shotgun does not.
Running a shotgun properly
- Assign starting holes with the draw, and put them on the sheet in big type. “Group 7 — hole 12” is the only information anyone needs.
- Get everyone out to their hole 15 minutes early, and use a horn, a text or a klaxon. Groups that leave the clubhouse late hold up the hole behind them for the entire round.
- Use A/B splits for large fields. Two groups per hole, one starting at the tee and one at the fairway landing area, marked clearly on the sheet.
- Watch the par 3s. They are the choke point; consider not doubling them up.
- Brief the format on paper. With a shotgun there is no starter to remind each group in turn, so whatever is not on the sheet will not be known.
- Expect the finish to bunch. Everyone hands in at once, so scoring must be able to absorb 18 cards in five minutes. Live scoring where groups enter as they play removes this entirely.
Running tee times properly
- 8 minutes for threeballs, 10 for fourballs. See tee times and groups.
- Publish the draw the evening before, with an expected finish time.
- Put a reliable group first and last.
- Make the leaderboard show holes completed. Without it, a player who has finished 18 holes looks worse than one who has played 9 well, and the board is actively misleading for the first two hours.
That last point is the one that catches people using live scoring for the first time with staggered tee times. The board is fine — it just needs a “thru” column, and everyone needs to know to read it.
The hybrid: a split tee
Groups start from the 1st and the 10th simultaneously, at intervals. Halves the tee window, needs far less course control than a full shotgun, and most clubs will consider it when they will not consider a shotgun.
It is the most underrated option on this page. For a society day of 40 to 60 players it gets everybody out in half the time, finishing within an hour of each other, without closing the course.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a shotgun start in golf?
- A shotgun start sends every group out at the same time from a different hole, so a field of up to 72 players begins simultaneously and finishes within about fifteen minutes of each other. It requires exclusive access to the course, which is why clubs charge more for it and reserve it for full-field events.
- How many players can play a shotgun start?
- Up to four per hole across 18 holes, so 72 in a standard shotgun. Larger fields use an A/B split, with two groups per hole — one starting at the tee and one further up the fairway — taking capacity to around 144, though par 3s are usually left single to avoid a bottleneck.
- Is a shotgun start more expensive?
- Usually, yes. A shotgun requires the club to hold the whole course rather than selling tee times through the morning, so the pricing reflects the lost revenue. A split-tee start — groups leaving the 1st and 10th at intervals — gets much of the benefit at a lower cost and is often available when a full shotgun is not.
- Does live scoring work with staggered tee times?
- Yes, provided the leaderboard shows how many holes each player has completed alongside their score. Without that column, early groups on the front nine appear to be losing to late groups who have barely started, and the board misleads for the first couple of hours.