Planned a dozen golf trips for groups now. Same three mistakes kill the trip every time — and none of them are about the golf.

1. Nobody agrees on the course until it's too late.

One guy wants a bucket-list links course, another wants something cheap and close to the hotel. By the time you vote in the group chat, half the good tee times are gone. Lock the course (or shortlist 2-3) in week one, not week three.

2. The lodging is an afterthought.

Groups obsess over the course and then book whatever hotel pops up first — usually 40 minutes from the first tee. That's an extra hour a day in a car with 4 sweaty guys. Lodging proximity matters more than the thread count.

3. There's nothing planned for the evenings.

Golf ends at 2pm. If there's no plan for dinner, a show, or something else to do, the trip turns into everyone on their phones in a hotel room by 6pm. The best trips have one "non-golf" thing booked — a concert, a good steakhouse, whatever fits the group.

If you're already deep in a group chat trying to plan one of these and it's turning into a part-time job — that's basically the exact problem we built Links & Lodging to solve. Tell us the group, the vibe, and the dates, and we build the whole thing (course, stay, and the extras) with pricing up front.