The Bay Area Golf Report

A fixed snapshot of bookable tee times with a listed price for October 7–12, 2026, held still so the figures stay citable. Prices are per-player public green fees; we use medians throughout because golf prices are right-skewed. The Saturday premium and the twilight discount compare each course with itself (Saturday mornings against weekday mornings; 3pm-and-later against mornings). Cart fees are not normalized, and the window holds a single Saturday. Course-level figures need a minimum number of priced tee times, hours with thin inventory are left off the charts, and the cheapest and priciest lists include regulation 18-hole courses only. The summer-to-fall trend uses only courses with price history in every month.

Correction (October 7, 2026). Cheapest/priciest 18-hole lists: Diablo Creek removed (a scraper read its $17 cart-rate add-on instead of the $40 green fee); Davis (par 67), Northwood and Old Brockway (9-hole courses played twice) removed so the lists compare regulation 18-hole courses (par 68+). Headline medians unchanged.

Previous edition: July 2026.

What it measures. We follow the same course, date and time of day as the date approaches and track how many bookable 18-hole tee times remain, from six days out to the night before, over July 12 – August 10, 2026.

Net change, not a fill rate. We can see what remains, never what a course opened, so this is bookings minus any tee times released in the meantime. A course that keeps adding slots can look flat while booking briskly, and a few finish with more than they started.

Same-day is excluded. On the day itself, inventory drains because the clock moves (morning slots pass), not because golfers book, so every series ends the night before.

Complete series only. A missing reading means a course couldn’t be reached, not that its tee sheet emptied, so only fully observed series count. Courses need enough weekend mornings observed to be ranked individually. Six days is our horizon: courses that release tee times further ahead are only partly covered.

A fair-value model: we regress each course's log median 18-hole price on its USGA course rating and slope, then rank courses by how far their actual median falls below the predicted price. Rating and slope explain only part of what golf costs (R² 0.17 right now; location and reputation explain much of the rest), which is exactly why a course priced well below the line is worth knowing about. We use course rating and slope rather than star reviews, because review data is too sparse to rank fairly while ratings measure the golf itself. A course needs at least 10 live priced 18-hole slots (10–19 flagged "small n"), par 68+, and a rating on file; courses missing a rating are excluded rather than guessed. Cart fees not normalized; same-day partial inventory excluded.

Remaining bookable 18-hole slots 7–11am on the upcoming Saturday/Sunday, per course. There is no upcoming weekend inside the current booking window right now.

For each course and time of day (dawn, morning, midday, twilight) we take the median of its live priced 18-hole slots this week; a course needs at least 10 slots in that daypart to qualify, so a thin sample can't fake a deal. A slot makes the feed if it is a twilight slot on any day this week, or any slot on today's sheet, and is priced at least 15% below the course's median for that same daypart. Twilight is compared with twilight, so a standard twilight rate is not a deal. We show each course's single biggest markdown. 120 same-day deal slots live now.