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For years, it was an open secret. Brokers scooped tee times at public golf courses in Los Angeles, profiting from taxpayer-owned recreation, and selling Prime slots online.
The golfer complained about the extreme difficulties that come into contact with the impossible to play on untouched, affordable municipal courses like Griffith Park and Rancho Park.
The issue was released last spring when evidence from the broker was hit by social media. The Times interviewed two brokers who shared how they sold their coveted T-Shirt Times.
Amid the fuss, LA’s Recreation Bureau and the parks have introduced pilot programs to curb profiteering. Golfers will need to pay $10 per person to book tea time. This will be confiscated if the booking is cancelled.
Almost ten months later, reservation data shared with golfers, park officials and the Times shows that initially skeptical and annoying fees have proven to be successful.
“I didn’t think charging a $10 fee would make a difference, but that was certainly the case,” said Reggie Kenner, 77, of Manhattan Beach. “Now, you can sometimes ride a decent time on a course you couldn’t book before.”
“It’s still difficult, but it’s natural because there are a lot of players who play golf on weekends,” said Jongseo Joseph Lee, president of Socal Dream Golf Club, which plays golf twice a month on the City course.
Lee, who conducted extensive research into brokers and filed a complaint with park officials well before public outrage, was the plaintiff in a class action failure against the city, where officials allegedly not stopped strolling around the T-shirts.
“I can say it’s much better than it has in recent years,” he added.
Betty Bricks, who plays three times a week on City Courses and chairs the Golf Advisory Committee, provided recommendations and oversight to staff at the Recreation and Parks Department, which manages 12 golf courses in LA, and said the situation has been “significantly improved.”
“I can get tea time every time I try to get it,” she said.
The Parks division signaled victory in the fight against brokers, but stopped declaring that the practice was completely eliminated.
“The process used by TEE Time Brokers to book, promote, resell and re-order Tee Times has been significantly reduced,” spokesman Romondo Locke said in a statement.
In the previous system, golfers paid nothing to secure a reservation. Tea time was held every morning at 6am for nine days. Within seconds, the best time was gone, like 8am on Saturday at Rancho Park on the West Side.
Network of Brokers – Many of the Korean community have swallowed up some major slots and pitched them on social media, especially on the Korean app Kakaotalk. According to price sheets posted on social media, they sold tea time for up to $40 each.
#FreeTheTee has become a rally cry and a call for public accountability after golf experts and social media influencer Dave Fink published Tee Time Black Market to more than 200,000 Instagram followers last March.
One broker Ted Kim told The Times he has earned tee times at LA City Golf Course and other public courses in Southern California, selling thousands of dollars a month. However, he denied violation of the law and did not respond to recent messages seeking comment.
The broker, as Kim admits, will forward tee times by booking reservations under the golfer’s player card or by making an orchestrated handoff.
Kevin Fitzgerald, former chairman of the Golf Advisory Committee, said data reviewed by Parks officials appeared to confirm the handoff scheme.
Fitzgerald said cancellations occur at ambiguous times, such as 2:48am.
“All of a sudden, you’ll have a rebook after three seconds, but that’s not possible without adjustment,” he said. “If traffic is low, it’s expected that re-booking will take longer and will not disappear in a few seconds.”
Under the program enacted in May, golfers pay a $10 fee (essentially a deposit) to each person on the reservation. Individuals who reserve the group must be present on play day. Foursome’s $40 deposit applies to cancellations that confiscate the fee on the course, including total admission or green fees. Green rates are typically around $32 to $50 per person, but less popular times are discounted for seniors and juniors.
From May to October, the first six months of the pilot program, the number of reserved T-shirts fell nearly 95% compared to 339,732 to 17,739 for the same period in 2023.
On the booking platform, nearly 400 golfers had profiles with over 60 cancellations, which plummeted to 13 golfers after the fee.
“There was no impact to teeing time cancellations. They were able to store all the available time slots and sell them through third-party outlets.”
Fitzgerald, former Golf Advisory Committee Chairman, said that when the pilot program launched last spring, he received many calls saying, “This is outrageous and doesn’t help.”
“But within a month, the phone was totally against it,” he continued. “I heard: I don’t like to pay deposits, but for the first time in six years I had a tee time on the Wilson course at 10:30am on a Saturday.
The golfer also explained the drawbacks of the $10 fee. If golfers don’t miss tee time, they lose money. Others say that fee divisions between golfers are a hassle. And if no one has booked the Foursome, other golfers are not allowed to play.
“I’m probably booking less tee times now because I don’t want to be charged,” said golfer and content creator Lewis Leon. At first, he said slots became more available. “But it doesn’t seem to have continued, because it’s still almost impossible to have a good time in places like Rancho Park or Griffith Park.”
“It’s unfair to say that this is completely smooth and there’s no burden associated with it,” Fitzgerald said.
There are still some unrelenting complaints about how cities dealt with broker issues.
Lee, who filed a class action lawsuit, accused the city of being dull by enacting simple reforms that would preserve the integrity of public golf courses. The lawsuit also alleges that City Parks staff accepted the money from one of the brokers, suggesting that corruption is a factor in the TEE time scheme.
In a statement, the Recreation and Parks department said there was “no indication or reason to believe that city employees are engaged in that type of inappropriate activity.” Nevertheless, the Parks division has confirmed that it has not launched a “formal investigation” of tee time brokers.
“Given the positive outcomes of the pilot program, no formal investigation was required,” Locke said in a statement.
Brix and Fitzgerald, the current and former chairs of the Golf Advisory Committee, argued that there was no evidence of fraud by Parks staff.
“That was the most discouraging part of that,” Bricks said of the allegations of fraud, adding that some staff members had received death threats over mediating TEE time. “All they’re trying to do is provide a good experience for LA City Golf.”
The time at LA City Golf Course remains in record time. In 2024, more than one million rounds took place across the city’s 12 courses. This has increased 28% since 2019. Proceeds from golf subsidize other urban park programs.
The Golf Advisory Board recently recommended that the city make the pilot program permanent, but will adjust its structure to allow a reservation fee of “up to” $10. This will give park officials more freedom to lower reservation fees at slots at unwanted times, such as 4pm.
“I don’t think the system is completely fixed because I don’t think there’s anything completely fixed,” Brix said, “but I think it’s going to be as good as the big system we have.”
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