SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — On a sunny Tuesday morning, the putting green outside the Balboa Park golf course was packed.
"Doesn't look like we're going to get on here," golfer Tomer Blackburn said. Blackburn had already tried to get a tee time in Coronado earlier in the morning.
"You wake up in the morning, check (the tee time website) at 7 and they're already all filled," Max Raulston, another golfer added.
The putting green is filled with golfers waiting for a tee time. Just showing up, hoping to get on the 18-hole course at a desirable time. They are showing up because they couldn't book a morning tee time online.
"It's close to near impossible now to get on," Nick Sciuto said. Sciuto booked his round well in advance.
"You can't get anything from 7 to 10 a.m., it's pretty impossible," Raulson said.
The city's beautiful and affordable public golf courses like at Balboa Park and at Torrey Pines use online reservation systems.
The courses are highly attractive to golfers, considered well-maintained, and affordable.
But the competition to get on the course is getting tougher, and not just because more people are playing golf.
The City of San Diego says people and third-party companies are using bots to swoop up the tee times right as they drop.
"I'm a little annoyed about that idea," Derrick Domingo said after hearing of the bots.
While the city told ABC 10News that bots are being used, it has no way of knowing how many bots are being deployed.
In a statement, the city said it is, "aware that customers and third-party golf reservation companies may try to gain an advantage in securing tee times by employing bot technology."
The statement went on to say it is difficult to quantify the actual number of tee times secured by bots and, "to deter bot usage the city utilizes CAPTCHA verification technology, but no system is 100% effective."
The city said more than 35,000 people are using its annual resident card program, which is designed to ensure people living in the city get to play the courses. The city believes the recent surge in golf's popularity is a factor in the difficulty of securing a desirable tee time.
But while San Diego golfers keep practicing and waiting their turn at the putting green on public courses, the golfers, and the city don't know if the person in the slot they want got the tee time by using a bot.
"It sucks if it's just a select few that own bots and can go out and play and other people are waiting their turn and don't get to play," Raulson said.
