Where the term comes from
Every hole starts from the tee, the small raised area named after the wooden peg the ball sits on. Put a clock time against that spot and you have a tee time: the slot a course reserves for your group on the first tee.
The phrase does double duty. Golfers use it for the reservation itself, as in booking a tee time, and for the moment on the clock, as in our tee time is 7:40.
Words you'll hear alongside it
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Tee sheet | The course's full schedule of start slots for the day. |
| Starter | The staff member at the first tee who sends groups off on time. |
| Twilight | Discounted late-afternoon tee times, usually the final hours before sunset. |
| Walk-on | Playing without a reservation by taking whatever gap the starter can find. |
| Foursome | The standard maximum group for one tee time: four players. |
| Rain check | Credit for holes lost to weather, applied to a future round. |
The practical side
The meaning is the easy half. Release windows, arrival buffers, and cancellation rules are what decide whether you actually play, and the full what is a tee time explainer walks through those step by step.
Try the workflow on one real watch
The clearest test is still one real course, one real time window, and the player count you need. That setup shows whether the workflow stays readable once it leaves the page.
Check a course's tee times →