Saturday Versus Sunday Noise

There's a lot of things a Tournament Director handles that many of the players don't even realize.  And, by the way, this is just fine to us!  We would rather you all focus on just playing and not worry about anything related to running a tournament or the nuances of running a tournament.

One of the things players don't really realize is the noise level difference between Sunday play and Saturday play of a 2-day tournament.

Saturdays are JAMMED PACKED with players and spectators.  We are trying to whittle down from a field of around 100 to 24 (or less) the next day.  So, the majority of the players are there all day on Saturday wall-to-wall with only a handful of players left on Sunday.

Tiger Woods recently dealt with (again) a fan yelling during his swing.  You can read about it here.  

Golf is like pool on Sundays.  It's very quiet on Sundays of a pool tournament, less hustle and bustle and less players.  However - the crowd of golf is like a pool tournament on Saturdays.

Okay, let me get to my point before you all go leave me to go read the National Enquirer.

The point is, on Saturdays Tournament Directors are mostly focused on running the tournament smoothly and efficiently.  On Sundays, though, because there are less people around, less matches playing and less fans watching, the room is much more quieter - which means noises are more of a distraction on Sundays.  And that directly relates to a TD being more active to ensure there is less distraction for the players on Sundays.

Hear me out (of the irony of noise lol).  There is so many people around on Saturdays, literally elbow to elbow sometimes, that a full event seems like one big non-stop noisy atmosphere.  If someone was to fall off a chair, most of the room may not even know that happened.  But on Sunday it is so much quieter, more open spaces, less people, fewer matches, and that all leads to less noise.  And that person falling off the chair on Sunday makes the entire room suddenly look around because it was so quiet.

The article I referenced went on to talk about the tradition of golf and the quietness of that sport.  He asks, what if that changed, though?

The guy said, "Noise isn’t the enemy here. Silence is."

And that reminds me of Sundays of a pool tournament.  We get less distracted in a room full of people while we play our matches on Saturdays.  On Sundays, though, there is so few people and it's therefore so quiet, the poor, innocent guy who is just trying to place a food order gets under our skin because he seems so loud!  lol.