Terrible experience at Casselview Sunday Oct 11th

First off I have always had a pretty good experience at Casselview and would rate them pretty high for customer service in the area. In fact they post on their website that Casselview is renowned for its superb conditioning and unsurpassed service. I have played there at least 50-60 times and really like the respect they dictate on pace of play and of course the great condition of the course itself. This day was just the opposite. I am not bashing them here, I will state facts as they happened.

I had a tee time of 1:20 and was called out at 1:00 by the starter to go ahead to the tee if we were ready since there was a group that had not showed up and he also grabbed another 2some to join us. I figured they were quite busy so we headed to the tee box. I immediately noticed 6 players who had just teed-off. I inquired with the starter on the tee box about the 6 players and told me it was a 24 man scramble but that they would keep pace and that a marshall would be monitoring it. I told him that was impossible since you have 3 groups of 3-2 man teams playing best ball. I told him you have 6 guys each playing a ball and its a tourny so they will all be taking their time hitting every shot and reading greens like they are in the PGA. I cannot understand the reasoning behind placing a 24 man scramble on a long weekend in the middle of the day. My round took 5:45 minutes as a result and we finished at dusk. The 2-some behind us quit after 9 holes.

The starters assessment could not be further from the truth. I called the clubhouse on the 5th tee with the group behind us there and another just 20 yards behind us on the green. It had taken 1 hour and 10 minutes to play 4 holes (all very short) and informed them that the pace was slow every hole (we were behind the last 6some). I could see there was an entire hole open ahead on the 6th hole as the tee is right beside us and that there were no golfers playing the 11th or 12th holes so obviously there was room somewhere. The fellow I spoke to was dismissive about the situation and then said I should talk to the manager who was not available at the time. When we got to the 5th green a staff member had arrived and I am not sure if he was the manager or not as he did not seem to be a marshall. He told me the 24 players were not holding things up and that it was the group ahead of them that was 1/2 hole behind and he had informed the guilty party to play faster. I was a little insulted and I told him how slow this group was and the one ahead of them as well since they were 6 players. I said what he was saying made no sense that a 4SOME is holding up 6 players x 3 groups??? Then he told me there was a 1.5 hour frost delay in the morning. I said it was 2:20 now and pointed to the 12th hole that was empty. He said he would continue to watch the groups but we never saw him again. I looking at their facebook page today I see that I spoke to Paul Rodgers . I guess he is the manager. We laboured through one of the longest rounds I have ever played in golf aside from a full out tournament. I took another look at the 12th green on the tee box of the 7th hole where a 2some was on the green and no one behind them at all so there was still all kinds of room on the back.

The decision to allow this mini scarmble rests with management and to put money ahead of the playing pleasure of the remaining golfers playing behind them is not what I thought Casselview was all about. . To boot the tournament players were enjoying themselves and were very loud at many times and were not supervised as we were told. I have provided this feedback to the course and told them I would appreciate a phone call about this very negative experience, I paid full price to play and did not enjoy what would have been one of the last really nice golfing days of the season, I also told them I would be happy to post their feedback here once they call me on it or respond to the feedback.

Update, I called them and they insist the frost delay was the reason for the long wait and that the entire course was full. Of course the "marshall" what was telling me this finished his shift at 3:30

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Originally Posted by leftylucas

First off I have always had a pretty good experience at Casselview and would rate them pretty high for customer service in the area. In fact they post on their website that Casselview is renowned for its superb conditioning and unsurpassed service. I have played there at least 50-60 times and really like the respect they dictate on pace of play and of course the great condition of the course itself. This day was just the opposite. I am not bashing them here, I will state facts as they happened.

I had a tee time of 1:20 and was called out at 1:00 by the starter to go ahead to the tee if we were ready since there was a group that had not showed up and he also grabbed another 2some to join us. I figured they were quite busy so we headed to the tee box. I immediately noticed 6 players who had just teed-off. I inquired with the starter on the tee box about the 6 players and told me it was a 24 man scramble but that they would keep pace and that a marshall would be monitoring it. I told him that was impossible since you have 3 groups of 3-2 man teams playing best ball. I told him you have 6 guys each playing a ball and its a tourny so they will all be taking their time hitting every shot and reading greens like they are in the PGA. I cannot understand the reasoning behind placing a 24 man scramble on a long weekend in the middle of the day. My round took 5:45 minutes as a result and we finished at dusk.

The starters assessment could not be further from the truth. I called the clubhouse on the 5th tee with the group behind us there and another just 20 yards behind us on the green. It had taken 1 hour and 10 minutes to play 4 holes (all very short) and informed them that the pace was slow every hole (we were behind the last 6some). I could see there was an entire hole open ahead on the 6th hole as the tee is right beside us and that there were no golfers playing the 11th or 12th holes so obviously there was room somewhere. The fellow I spoke to was dismissive about the situation and then said I should talk to the manager who was not available at the time. When we got to the 5th green a staff member had arrived and I am not sure if he was the manager or not as he did not seem to be a marshall. He told me the 24 players were not holding things up and that it was the group ahead of them that was 1/2 hole behind and he had informed the guilty party to play faster. I was a little insulted and I told him how slow this group was and the one ahead of them as well since they were 6 players. I said what he was saying made no sense that a 4SOME is holding up 6 players x 3 groups??? Then he told me there was a 1.5 hour frost delay in the morning. I said it was 2:20 now and pointed to the 12th hole that was empty. He said he would continue to watch the groups but we never saw him again. We laboured through one of the longest rounds I have ever played in golf aside from a full out tournament. I took another look at the 12th green on the tee box of the 7th hole where a 2some was on the green and no one behind them at all so there was still all kinds of room on the back.

The decision to allow this mini scarmble rests with management and to put money ahead of the playing pleasure of the remaining golfers playing behind them is not what I thought Casselview was all about. . To boot the tournament players were enjoying themselves and were very loud at many times and were not supervised as we were told. I have provided this feedback to the course and told them I would appreciate a phone call about this very negative experience, I paid full price to play and did not enjoy what would have been one of the last really nice golfing days of the season, I also told them I would be happy to post their feedback here once they call me on it or respond to the feedback.

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Look forward to your next post as to their explanation..if they have a legit one that is

This is indicative---it has happened before and did not end up with a good result---it's the $$$$$$$ again. Interesting to see if they actually reply.

After reading this, I was trying to understand why they would have 6 in a group, and I came up with these scenarios and my comments on them ...
6-person teams - WTF ?? what tournament organizer would think that this is a good idea ??
3 @ 2-person teams - well then, if you have 24 players, you need 6 tee times, each with 2 @ 2-person teams. Unless of course they didn't book enough tee times, or oversubscribed the number of entries and decided to screw the course by making 6-person groups.
2 @ 3-person teams. Also a bad idea, if you don't trust the teams to keep honest scores and play with 3-person tee time groups, then you need groups of 6.

At the end of the day, it would seem the tournament organizer messed up, and somehow convinced the course that they would be "fine".

Which puts the onus on the course management to MANAGE the situation. But as you posted, if they see 24 golfers each buying 3 or 4 beers at $9 a pop, and then having dinner afterwards with more beers .... cha-ching !!

Very interested to see the response. I've played Casselview a few times, and wouldn't rate the service as better or worse than most other courses.

Just my $0.02

It should be communicated if there is a fall scramble event taking place. Worse then not communicating aeration. And yes these scrambles are slow!!! Buddy played in Smiths Falls in a scramble on Saturday. Teed off at 11:10 and was done at 5:50! Groups played as eight somes and there was an auto par so bogey wasn’t in play. When you host such an event you need to close the course to any other traffic that day. Playing six somes mid day is fine but you cannot have green fee players behind. I have to assume if the original poster knew they were booked behind a scramble tourney they would have gone elsewhere.

Just a guess - they originally had 6 tee times @ 4 golfers each booked for the tournament, but with the frost delay and a packed tee sheet they decided to go to 4 tee times @ 6 golfers each instead of pushing all the tee times back. That is why you were able to tee off 20 minutes earlier than planned - so basically they made the tournament group happy and screwed everybody else that played after them.

It still is very poor course management. It is a weekend in October - you have to be prepared for frost delays (especially for tournaments). At least they had 10-minute tee time intervals, but they could have "locked" the tee time after the tournament for pace of play reasons (I'm guessing the twosome that joined you had the 1:10 tee time).

I called them, they did not call me and they said they were fully booked for the day and booked tee times from 7am so they blamed it on the frost!! 1.5 hour delay. Seems odd and there were 2 holes open on the back for quite a while. They also clarified that they were 3 man teams and not 2 man teams, again what were they thinking. It was also a member organising it with the club so that is another twist. The person who was trying to get the pace going left at 3:30 so another reason why things only got worse.

You are right JohnnyC, we were deciding between Rockland and Casselview and decided on the latter just because we had not gone this year, had we known about the tourney we would have bailed for sure but hey they have our money now so they don't care, I guess they should enjoy it as we will never be back after they way they handled this one.

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Originally Posted by leftylucas

You are right JohnnyC, we were deciding between Rockland and Casselview and decided on the latter just because we had not gone this year, had we known about the tourney we would have bailed for sure but hey they have our money now so they don't care, I guess they should enjoy it as we will never be back after they way they handled this one.

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Put it this way, with the increase of traffic/players this year, they couldn't care less about 1-2 unhappy players!. There isn't anything that they can do now except providing you with a free round. I think that's what they will offer you with to smooth thing over :)

This has happened all over Ottawa golf courses this year due to the increase number of players.

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Originally Posted by leftylucas

I called them, they did not call me and they said they were fully booked for the day and booked tee times from 7am so they blamed it on the frost!! 1.5 hour delay. Seems odd and there were 2 holes open on the back for quite a while. They also clarified that they were 3 man teams and not 2 man teams, again what were they thinking. It was also a member organising it with the club so that is another twist. The person who was trying to get the pace going left at 3:30 so another reason why things only got worse.

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In a 3-man scramble they usually pair two teams together into six-somes so no one cheats. You always have another team watching you.

Lots of cash scrambles this time of year, courses do it (in normal years) to fill empty tee sheets. They need to rethink holding them if they're putting them out with green fee players. That's ridiculous.

I am not expecting anything from them, not even a return call at this point. I think it was the man on the ground that did not effectively deal with the back-up as there were several holes open when I looked and I had plenty of time to do that. In any case if they own it and do something that would be great, if they don't even call me back then they should remove all references to excellent customer satisfaction on their website.

I was about to post but Gobble-it said it all. It will be a frosty Friday before you hear from Casselview-----they are far enough out that once you are they don't care. The first sign of non interest comes as soon as you deal with the girls at the counter. Anyway season almost over---hope everyone remembers the good places to play :-)

We have about 4/5 of these scrambles every year at our club. Takes about 4/5 hours to play, but nobody would ever do 2/3 somes per tee times. We go by the honor system and every groups are all close together and if someone would cheat well I can't say what would happened to there reputation and their golf membership. We did the 2/3 somes 30 years ago and took us 6.5 hours.

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Originally Posted by slash

We have about 4/5 of these scrambles every year at our club. Takes about 4/5 hours to play, but nobody would ever do 2/3 somes per tee times. We go by the honor system and every groups are all close together and if someone would cheat well I can't say what would happened to there reputation and their golf membership. We did the 2/3 somes 30 years ago and took us 6.5 hours.

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I hate to say it especially when one considers that the game is based on integrity but when the money pot gets big enough it’s almost impossible to proceed without checks and balances. Smith Falls last weekend was $170 a player plus Calcutta. Our member guest gets over $10,000. If I won it’s a lot easier if there is another group present to attest to our score. Heck at the RBC scramble at Royal Ottawa last month you needed a scorer.

Should have mentioned that we don't allow non members that we don't know. Every team has to have 2 members. We allow at most 5/10 non members but most members knows them. That out of 80 players.

[QUOTE][A dissatisfied customer will tell between 9-15 people about their experience. Around 13% of dissatisfied customers tell more than 20 people. – White House Office of Consumer Affairs. Happy customers who get their issue resolved tell about 4-6 people about their experience./QUOTE]

An explanation, apology, phone call or a small gesture like a free round of golf or a refund of green fees to Leftylucas and this thread would have had a positive customer relations outcome to Casselview instead of a negative one. The potential monetary loss of business from this fiasco cannot be calculated but the avoidance of this negative publicity can....the actual cost of his green fee...$40.

While I enjoy a good rant thread as much as anybody, the reality here is that Casselview doesn't care if one disgruntled golfer shares his story.

Based on their location and pricing they are still going to get just as many golfers as they always have.

It is still beyond comprehension as to why every course owner or manager does not have an active presence on this site. The ones that do (Stonebridge, Pineview and Sorcier come immediately to mind) handle both positive and negative experiences by their customers promptly and professionally.

COVID may have been a short term winfall for courses this year. and it may have brought on some short term amnesia...last year some courses were on the brink of closing due to the lack of rounds being played. I don't think that courses can afford to alienate clients in good times or bad IMHO.

Sorry to hear about your experience Luc. We did play in a cash tournament about a month ago, and we did go out at 6 somes mid-day, but it was a scramble, and I think the pace of play was pretty good all things considered (not 6 hour round). Albeit you will get 6 guys reading every putt from every angle which I am sure will slow things down. Hopefully you will hear from the course Luc.

Update, Casselview Carl Desjardins called me this morning after I left a message yesterday. He took full ownership of the delay, he did a lot of things to try to fix the frost delay and none worked as well as trying to move the pace up but he let some golfers off the back to help out but it did not help. He also made the mistake of putting people out at 7-9 minute intervals after the frost delay to get things going but it backfired. He has provided a free round with cart. Glad they called back to make it right.

Glad you got a response and are happy. I know I was supposed to play a few weeks a go and there was a frost delay (3 hours), it sucked, but the last 3 hours of tee times for the day were cancelled... and they called and advised people their tee times were cancelled due to the frost delay....

Thanks Craiger, that is a pretty good idea to cancel later tee times, I am sure they learned a lot from this and glad they took ownership and made it right.

Glad it all worked out Luc.


Six golfers per tee time at midday in October - I hope they learned their lesson!

Given that they 'made things right' I think it would be appropriate for you to amend your thread title.

I would leave the "title" alone----it happened and it was rectified---kudos to Cassel View----hope it won't happen again :-)

The marshall should have sent you to the 12th hole. If you were carting then you could have come back and finish the remaining holes later on.:-)

Good idea but they seemed to not understand what they could do even though I pointed it out to them.