A buddies golf trip is many things: a sacred annual tradition, an excuse to drink before noon, a chance to win back that $60 you lost last year. It is not, unfortunately, something that plans itself.
Every group has one person who ends up doing most of the work. If you’re reading this, congrats—it’s probably you. The good news is it doesn’t have to be a nightmare. In fact, with the right approach, planning the trip is half the fun.
Here’s what actually works, from people who’ve seen it all.
6 Tips for a Perfect Buddies Golf Trip
1. Plan some downtime
The urge to cram in 36 holes every single day is real, and we respect the ambition. But here’s what actually happens: by day three, one guy’s moving a little slower getting out of the cart, another’s fuse is getting shorter with every mishit, and someone’s on the range doing a full pre-round stretch routine just to make it through the front nine.
Do one big 36-hole day. Then, the rest of the trip, stick to late-morning tee times with a proper breakfast before and enough evening left to create the kind of memories that require a group pact of silence. Most great golf destinations have more going on than just golf anyway, and giving the trip a little room to breathe means you’ll actually enjoy the golf more, not less.
2. Mix up the competition
Stroke play is great until your buddy cards a snowman on hole 3 and spends the rest of the round narrating his own misery. The fix is simple: rotate formats and rotate pairings. Match play, better ball, scrambles, a skins game—change it up each day and suddenly everyone has a reason to stay invested until the last hole.
3. Be upfront with costs
Before you book a single thing, ask everyone what they’re actually comfortable spending—not what they say in the group chat, but what they mean. Take that number, add a few hundred dollars on top for an extra round, a nice dinner, or whatever chaos the trip inevitably introduces, and build your budget from there. It’s a lot easier to hand money back than to chase it down three weeks after everyone’s home.
If you can manage it, put everything on one card and settle up when you’re back. Splitting checks in the moment is a recipe for bad math and nobody wants to do long division after a full day on the course.
4. Look for package deals
Stay & Play packages are underrated. Tee times, greens fees, and accommodations bundled into one price—usually cheaper than booking everything separately and, more importantly, one fewer thing to crowdsource in the group chat.
5. Ship ahead
Every year, on every buddies trip, someone ends up at baggage claim watching the carousel go around one final time, knowing deep down that their clubs are in Cincinnati. Don’t be that guy. Don’t travel with that guy.
ShipSticks gets your clubs to your hotel or course before you even land, so you walk off the plane with a carry-on and zero grievances—no oversize baggage fees, no carousel anxiety, no starting your golf trip already furious at an airline. Traveling with 8 or more? You may even qualify for a group discount.
6. Delegate
If you’re the one holding this whole trip together, hats off—but martyrdom isn’t a planning strategy. Hand things off. One person handles accommodations, one scouts restaurants, someone else owns tee time research. You’re the one who got the ball rolling, which means your job now is to make sure everyone else does theirs. Split up the work and you don’t just save your own sanity—you get the whole group invested in the trip actually going well.
The group chat will eventually settle on something. Dave will, against all odds, be allowed to weigh in on dinner. Someone will card a round they’ll talk about for years, and someone else will card one they’ll spend years trying to forget.
All you have to do is make sure it actually happens—and that your clubs are there when it does.
