Back in the old pre-pandemic era, getting on the green was the most daunting part of an 18-hole day. Now, simply getting on the first tee is the hard part, like finding the fairway with a rickety swing. Noteefy, a rapidly rising company with an innovative, tech-based booking solution, is bringing the focus back to playing golf rather than planning it.
Founded in California during the post-Covid tee-time crunch, Noteefy has partnered with more than 800 golf courses and resorts since its launch in 2023, integrating a digital waitlist that connects golfers with tee times and provides a logistical and financial solution for course operators. The company has been featured by GOLF.com and Forbes and adopted by American Golf and KemperSports, among other prominent management companies. This spring, Noteefy took its first steps into the Long Island market at Pine Hills Country Club in Manorville and the new Spy Ring Golf Club in Setauket.
The Noteefy concept is inspired by platforms like OpenTable, says co-founder and CEO Jake Gordon, and its main purpose is to introduce tech-enabled efficiency to a booking process overly dependent on outdated procedures and manual effort. Once integrated with a course's tee-time platform, Noteefy allows golfers to enter their desired playing dates and times. When a tee time becomes available within that window, Noteefy sends a text or email alert and links players to the course reservation page.
"It's like having a concierge service helping you find tee times and asking if you want to go ahead and book," Gordon says.
Though the platform acts as a tee-time assistant for players, Noteefy's primary customer is the course operator. The convenience of online cancellations and modifications on the player side often leaves operators holding empty tee times with no efficient way to fill them, flushing away hundreds if not thousands of dollars in daily green fees. Noteefy's waitlist alerts, along with a recently added Confirm feature, enable courses to easily recapture much of that revenue. In 2024, Bally's Golf Links at Ferry Point ’97 the highly acclaimed New York City municipal course in the Bronx ’97 recaptured $230,000 in total revenue, including $100,000 worth of tee times canceled inside 48 hours, in the first six months with Noteefy, the company says.
Jimmi Conway, vice president of golf operations at Pine Hills and Spy Ring, says the personalized waitlist alerts are small gestures that resonate in a huge way with customers. "The system works so well," Conway says, "and players are so impressed that a golf course remembers them. They appreciate that we reached out to remind them about playing here."
Pine Hills and Spy Ring, both owned by Heatherwood Properties, serve as the test cases on Long Island, a region that is notoriously slow to embrace new ideas in the golf industry. A look at the Noteefy course map shows a wall of Metropolitan New York locations that abruptly stops at the Nassau County line. Noteefy initially launched in the Los Angeles area, a golf market that closely mirrors Long Island's incredibly high demand and limited supply. Gordon hopes the technology and the revenue data, especially at neighboring Ferry Point, appeal to operators across Nassau and Suffolk counties.
Of course, Noteefy's entrance into the Long Island market comes at a time when Bethpage State Park and other public facilities have turned to penal measures in an attempt to discourage use of automated bots and third-party resellers. In May, Bethpage updated its tee-time policy to make upfront reservation fees non-refundable in the event of cancellation or modification. The policy change was a response to an investigative report by No Laying Up's Kevin Van Valkenburg that revealed the depth and nature of bot use in the park's reservation system. The Town of Islip implemented a similar policy change in June.
Gordon says the platform is perfectly suited to work in tandem with municipal facilities and systems that, like Bethpage, have variations in booking windows, resident pricing and other parameters. Noteefy cites a case study of a similar multicourse system that recovered $200,000 in green fees that were canceled and subsequently rebooked within 48 hours of reserved tee times.
Conway says the move to add Pine Hills and Spy Ring to the Noteefy roster has been a hit. "Everything they promised, they undersold," he says. "The service we're providing is that much better."
[PICTURED: TOP RIGHT ’97 Spy Ring #7; BOTTOM RIGHT ’97 A Noteefy text alert for a peak tee time at Ferry Point in the Bronx. The search range was a Friday morning tee time between 6:00 and 11:00 a.m., a period that is often sold out. Players can follow the link to view or book the tee time.]