[John_W]

If you're a single, you don't want priority in putting in for a teetime, you don't want to put in a request unless you want to keep playing by yourself. Once you join the teetime system, $8 a month on villages.net. You can grab an open teetime up to 3 days before play, this way you can put your name in with a threesome or twosome, that once you play 18 holes might lead to a playing group.

Here's an example. You want to play a championship on Friday. On Tue or Wed on the teetime website you scroll down to the course and times you want to play. Let's say you want to play Belle Glade about 1pm, scroll down the times and you see a threesome at 1:14, put your name in and now you're playing with that group.

I play in a foursome every Friday. It started in 2011 with just my neighbor and myself. In 2015 a retired Army sergeant played with us and we asked if he wanted to play every Friday with us, and he said yes. He is also in a group on Tuesday, my neighbor has played with that Tuesday group for the last couple of years. Two years ago a retired Navy Pilot who lives in LaBelle played with us, he is from Hawaii and my neighbor used to live in Hawaii, so I asked him if he wanted to play every Friday with us, and he said, yes. So now we have a foursome of the same 4 guys every Friday for the last two years. There's many ways to find groups, besides playing with other twosomes or threesomes. You might find a neighbor where you're living. When I first moved here I played softball, so before I met my neighbor I played with a couple of guys from the softball team.

I used 1pm for example, for a few reasons. From May through December after 11am championship golf is discounted. We pay $34 up until Dec 31st, before 11:00 you will pay $42, that's the resident rate without Priority. With PM you would save only $7. We generally play Palmer, Mallory, Havana, Cane Garden, Belle Glade, Bonifay and Evans Prairie and sometimes Glenview. I live in Tamarind Grove off St. Charles and can get to everyone of those courses in about 15 minutes in my golf cart, Glenview is about 25 minutes. I'm also not an early person, I don't like playing on wet grass or morning dew. I don't mind the heat, I grew up in Florida and never went to a school with air conditioning. Also in the winter when rates are much higher, we sometimes only play nine holes, you can't play just nine holes until 1:00 or later in the winter. So afternoon golf is perfect for us.

None of us are priority members, if you play in the morning when times are not so spread out, you mind find them asking you if you're a priority member if they consider having you join them. In the afternoon, no big deal. I generally put in a request for the following Friday when I come home on Friday from playing. I request 3 or 4 courses at 1:00 to 1:36 and 90% of the time we get our first choice of course and 1:00, just like this week. We're playing Mallory (Amelia) @ 1:00pm.

Morning teetimes are more condensed because teetimes end at 9:28 and don't resume until 11:56 except on two 18 hole courses, Orange Blossom and Tierra Del Sol. All the courses we play are 27 holes and have a starter and exact same teetimes at each nine. So you can play a different 18 holes at the same course for three days. Because of this overlap of nines, they have the time between 9:28 and 11:56 as no teetimes, because players are making their turn to the back nine, they call it the wave, morning, afternoon and evening waves. Playing golf here is fun, you get to go to the course in your cart, you don't have to travel far, and the courses aren't that tough for the most part, we don't have hills, and very seldom blind shots. There is a lot of water and sand, but that's the tropical aspect which is nice.