Delaware Springs Golf Course — Attraction in Burnet

I’ve played Delaware Springs several times before. My friends and I USUALLY enjoy the course. Today was a s stark exception. It had nothing to do with the conditions for the course or the weather. It is about lack of course management/pace of play. Clearly one of the local ‘men’s groups’ was doing an event (probably a frequent thing) that day. There were closest to the hole markers on par threes. Not a tournament, just a club outing of some sort. The guy in the pro shop even said “I think my seniors have made the turn, so you can go ahead and head out”. So something was going on. Had several very slow groups ahead of us. Some of them were 5-deep (which is ridiculous) one allowed to play through, the others had no such etiquette. A “Marshal” took my receipt, doing the starter role. Then disappeared. No one out there to monitor pace of play. HORRIBLE. What makes it worse is that I called the day before when one my group got injured and couldn’t play. I advised them of this and asked if we could be moved to a different start time since it was a smaller group...might be better for them and us. (I checked their website first - LOTS of times were still open) I was told ‘Nope don’t have room to move you around’...I told them it could be earlier or later. Still NO. And there was no mention of the the time we did have being in the middle of this men’s club/group. Completely ridiculous and avoidable. I’m not playing golf to be in any kind of hurry, but slow play and ‘5-somes’ are something altogether different. At the next “team meeting” for the staff, maybe discuss the basics of management of play, start times, etc. I play all over the area and this was...

Pros: Condition of the course was great. Soft greens. Everything I expected for my first time to this course based on the amazing reviews.

Cons: A buddy and I booked early last Sat to beat the heat. Sign in, get our cart and away we go. We tee off on time but shortly noticed singles coming up on us quickly so we let them play through. Second single asked if we teed off at 1 because he was one of the first to start that day and we shouldn't have been ahead of him. He said we should have teed off at 10.

What?

Well we at hole 3 by then so we continue on. Breezed through the first 9.

Get to the clubhouse after 9 and explain our misunderstanding and notice a sign on the counter that wasn't there this morning saying "tee off at 10." Would have been nice to be told this when we started.

Of course by now, we get squeezed behind 3 foursome groups, at least that i could tell. We waited to tee off at least 10-15 min at each box. Back 9 takes twice as long as the first 9 and it was blazing hot by then, which i was trying to avoid.

I didn't play for free. Very frustrating.

I know we weren't the only ones not to get this memo either. Noticed another group trying to tee off at 1 when we were wrapping up on 9, only instead they ran into a group that was actually supposed to tee off at that hole and redirected them.

I hope this was just a bad day for some of the staff. Will try again but it...

Well maintained course, however one of the marshals was somewhat rude to us on multiple occasions. First time we were already on the 4th hole and he came up to us and stated "y'all don't listen very well do y'all?" Apparently we were supposed to start on hole 10, we were never told to do so and our receipt said Hole 1. Second time I was told about my RTIC backpack that only contained water and gatorade because its 100 degrees outside but I guess that's a no no cause TABC says I can't do that. Third interaction my 13yr old son was driving me on our cart, I told them at the desk at the pro shop he would be driving me and wasn't told anything about him not being able to drive but was told on the 12th hole he couldn't drive without a drivers license. Cart girl was only seen once during a 4hr+ round cause pace was slow and she blew by us so fast even if we wanted something didn't even have time to say anything. I've never been to a public course and interacted with a marshal that many times and in that manner. Course is nice and would like to play again, but good lord I'd just like to play a round and not have to worry about what the marshal is going to...