California · September 28, 2026
An affordable green fee means little if the reservation has already been captured by someone selling access to it. For golfers trying to book California’s busiest municipal courses, that has become a frustrating part of the game.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed Assembly Bill 1954, the Protecting Access to Reservations Act, or PAR Act. Authored by Assemblymember Chris Ward, a San Diego Democrat, and sponsored by the California Alliance for Golf, the measure establishes a statewide rule for third parties offering municipal golf reservations. The Legislature’s bill status page lists it as chaptered.
The Southern California Golf Association celebrated the signing as a victory for public golf. The practical significance is control: public course operators will have a statutory basis for challenging unauthorized reservation businesses while retaining the ability to work with approved booking partners.
What the PAR Act changes
Under the final enrolled text, a person or third-party golf reservation platform needs a written agreement with the course operator to list, advertise, promote, sell or transfer covered reservations on a third-party platform, subject to a narrow exception. An agreement also must expressly authorize any affiliate website or other internet platform it covers.
That reaches the offer of a reservation as well as its sale. It also makes operator consent the central test. A booking service can serve golfers through an authorized relationship; an unauthorized seller cannot justify its business simply by saying customers find it convenient. The rule does not depend on proving that a bot secured the reservation.
When the law takes effect
AB 1954 is a regular-session, non-urgency measure. Applying California Constitution Article IV, Section 8 to its September 2026 enactment gives it a January 1, 2027 effective date. The signing therefore gives course operators a period to prepare before the new restriction takes effect.
Existing course rules continue to matter during that period. Los Angeles already prohibits booking bots and certain other tools, and its official booking page says violations can result in canceled tee times and loss of reservation and playing privileges.
Which courses are covered? Ownership matters
The law covers courses owned by a local agency: cities, charter cities, counties, cities and counties, special districts and joint powers authorities. Its operator definition includes both the agency itself and an entity operating the course under a license, lease or management agreement. Those definitions also appear in the Senate Judiciary Committee analysis.
A municipal course remains within that ownership framework when a private company manages it. Conversely, a privately owned course does not come within this particular act merely because it sells rounds to the public. The everyday label “public course” is broader than the ownership category used here.
The distinction is relevant well beyond Los Angeles. San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department identifies its public golf portfolio, including TPC Harding Park and Lincoln Park. The legislation’s statewide reach gives municipal operators in both regions the same authorization rule; it does not establish that every course has experienced the same brokering problem.
How tee time brokering became a public golf problem
In its explanation of the bill, the California Alliance for Golf describes municipal golf as recreation priced to reach residents, seniors, juniors, school athletes and community organizations. The alliance is a coalition of golf associations managed by the SCGA, with a board drawn from allied organizations.
The access problem follows from that mission. When demand exceeds the available slots, someone who captures reservations can charge for access to a rate the course intentionally kept affordable. The public still owns the facility, but a portion of its most desirable availability can move into an unofficial resale market.
L.A. City Golf’s official FAQ describes a recurring method: brokers reserve available slots, advertise them for an additional fee, then cancel and immediately rebook them under paying customers’ names. The city says legitimate cancellations make the scale of that activity difficult to identify.
Federal prosecutors described another measure of the business’s scale in a September 2025 indictment announcement. They alleged that two brothers reserved thousands of tee times, including at least 17 Southern California public courses, and earned nearly $700,000 from brokering between 2021 and 2023. The federal charges concerned taxes; the announcement described allegations, not findings of guilt, and that prosecution was separate from AB 1954.
The resulting concern is more specific than the frustration of losing a booking race. An extra payment to a reservation intermediary can change who gets to use a recreational opportunity offered at a public price.
L.A.’s deposits helped—and exposed a tradeoff
Los Angeles began a nonrefundable deposit pilot on April 16, 2024. In its August 2025 report to the City Council, the parks department compared May–October 2024 with the same months in 2023: online tee times booked and canceled fell from 339,732 to 17,739, a 94.8 percent decline. Accounts with at least 60 cancellations fell from 398 to 13.
Those figures measure cancellations, rather than the number of brokers or illicit sales. They nevertheless show how much reservation behavior changed after speculative bookings began carrying a cost. The same report identified a burden for seniors at nine-hole courses, where a $10 deposit could approach the full green fee.
The city’s current FAQ describes a $10 deposit per player, credited toward the green fee at check-in and generally forfeited on cancellation. It also cautions that exceptionally high demand would make reservations difficult even without brokering.
That is the policy tension behind the PAR Act. Deposits can discourage people from holding inventory they never intend to use, but ordinary golfers also bear the cost when plans change. A statutory authorization rule gives municipalities another way to address a resale business operating outside their agreements.
The resale exception is narrower than it sounds
The final bill permits an individual who paid for a reservation to sell or transfer it for no more than the amount paid only if the operator does not clearly post its cancellation policy on the website where the reservation was secured.
Losing a nonrefundable deposit alone does not satisfy that condition. Golfers should check the displayed policy and contact the operator about a change of plans; the exception should not be read as general permission to sell a booking for a profit.
The alliance’s account of the Senate amendments explains that the earlier exception had been tied to whether a course offered refunds. The Senate replaced that condition with the requirement concerning a clearly posted cancellation policy. That amendment preserved operators’ ability to use nonrefundable booking policies while emphasizing disclosure.
Enforcement: read the final version
The final enrolled text does not create a dedicated fine schedule or a new criminal offense. Earlier drafts expressly connected violations to California’s Unfair Competition Law. According to the California Alliance for Golf, that reference was removed at the Department of Justice’s suggestion to avoid duplication that could complicate an operator’s effort to seek relief under that law.
The alliance describes the legislation as a tool for municipal operators seeking redress. That means enforcement still requires action; the statute does not monitor booking sites or automatically return reservations to the public. Local course rules and other applicable laws remain part of the picture.
L.A. already cancels reservations and suspends accounts associated with unpermitted brokering. The city’s booking policy illustrates the operational measures that can accompany the statewide restriction. Neither signing a law nor maintaining an account ban substitutes for identifying the seller and documenting what it is offering.
The bill’s path to the governor
Ward introduced AB 1954 on February 13, 2026. The official legislative history records a 70–0 Assembly vote on May 21, a 40–0 Senate vote on August 17, and a 78–0 Assembly vote concurring in the Senate amendments on August 19. It was presented to the governor on August 25.
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s June analysis recorded support from local government and golf organizations, including the League of California Cities, California Special Districts Association, California State Association of Counties, SCGA and San Francisco Public Golf Alliance. No opposition was recorded for that committee hearing. That is a description of the committee record at that stage.
What golfers and course operators should do next
Start at the course’s official booking page. If a separate service offers reservations, ask the operator whether the service is authorized before paying an additional fee.
Read the cancellation and transfer rules before booking. Contact course staff when plans change instead of assuming a reservation can be resold.
Send suspicious listings to the course operator with the seller’s URL, the advertised tee time and the requested fee. A listing is useful evidence; a sold-out booking page by itself does not establish brokering.
Operators should review their booking agreements and affiliate permissions, clearly display cancellation policies where reservations are secured, and maintain a process for documenting unauthorized listings.
The useful measure of success will be whether more of the existing inventory reaches golfers through the channels the course has chosen. The PAR Act cannot add daylight, create more holes or guarantee a Saturday morning foursome. It can give the people responsible for municipal golf a stronger basis for protecting access to the rounds already available.
For public golfers, that is a meaningful change: the value of an affordable course depends on having a fair opportunity to book it.
Reporting notes
Reported as of September 28, 2026. The legal provisions were checked against AB 1954’s final enrolled text and chaptered status; committee analyses were used for legislative background. The January 1, 2027 effective date follows the constitutional rule for regular-session, non-urgency statutes. The L.A. cancellation figures describe a historical comparison, not a current count of brokers. Practical suggestions and discussion of likely effects are editorial analysis.