Kevin may be wrong about airline schedules, but, in principle, tournaments should still offer last-round byes if requested soon enough, such as before the start of round 2.
Bill Smythe
Southwest goes out of Midway. Since I live close to O’Hare that would be a noticeable hassle for me. I ended up with a sub-$130 fare from O’Hare, but when I looked at alternate flight times they would have been either so close to the end of the round that travel time and queue time would have made catching a flight problematic (if the round ends a little after 6 PM then I wasn’t sure if I could get to the airport and through security in time to make the flight) or so late that I wouldn’t have that much time to sleep before the next workday anyway.
You probably know the KC airport better than I do, but since I get enough vacation days anyway I opted to take Monday instead of cutting out the moment the round ended and hoping that I didn’t hit a traffic jam.
The schedules may not be the same now, but at the time I was looking at them I had the choice of either getting a flight time out after 10:30 PM (in which case I’d be falling asleep at work the next day) or having to mix and match airlines on the round trip and adding $100 or more to the flight cost.
In any case, even though the difference between 8:30 AM and 9 AM isn’t much (6:30 AM and 7 AM PDT) playing around with the round times to help travel for just some people seems questionable. It would also reduce the time between rounds 5 and 6 from 10 hours to 9.5 hours, which cuts into the time people can take to sleep, shower and eat breakfast.
I think the schoalstic events are a bit different here.
- they are only competing for a trophy
- Entry fees are lower
- Kids are still figuring out what they want to do
- HS players may be taking a test or have a school function to attend on a Saturday.
I have generally allowed 0 point byes almost anywhere through the event, not 1/2 point byes. I have kids leaving for soccer games, basketball, piano recitals, etc and coming back. the deal on this is they must check back in beofre I pair them again. If they are late they miss the next round too for 0 points, but I will stick them back in when they show up.
These are not usually the top players, but sometimes they are, and I am simply trying to encourage participation. I have never had 1/2 point byes in the final round. Making these 0 points tends to mute most criticism.
Jeff,
If you live by O’Hare, that means you have a 30-45 minute drive to Midway. If you needed to absolutely get back Sunday evening, I just can’t believe that a 30-45 minute drive is any sort of a hassle to get the flight time you want. I would guess that most people have to travel at least that far to get to a local airport. I know Kevin lives not far from O’Hare as well.
Glenn