Research and Management Insights

Concern has been expressed that the pace of play of golf has become too slow, i.e., that the amount of time spent waiting and the overall time required to play a full round of eighteen holes have become excessively long. It is natural to respond to this challenge by applying the principles of production and operations management, because successive groups of golfers playing on a conventional golf course can be viewed, at least roughly, as a production line. Ward Whitt develops tractable stochastic models of group play on each of the three kinds of holes on a golf course, paying special attention to the inevitable randomness in the times required for each group to complete each stage of play. These models incorporate the realistic feature that more than one group can play at the same time on many of the holes, but under precedence constraints. The models for the individual holes can be combined to obtain a queueing network model for the play of successive groups over the entire course. For each of the basic models, Whitt determines the maximum possible throughput of the hole. That yields the capacity of the golf course, which is important for golf course design and management.