Lehmann asked hotel security to check the man's room, and they found that his luggage was gone. Lehmann sent out one of his staffers to replace the missing golfer in the foursome and got the group on the course. Then he tracked down the golfer's home number and called his wife to find out if he had made it home. “It turns out, he showed up later that night at his house. He just caught a flight without telling anybody. We never found out why or what had happened.”

The important thing was that the client was OK. “As an event organizer, this situation was a little hairy. Throughout the whole ordeal, we were all more worried for the client than anything else.”

When bringing groups to Vegas, it's important to consider the distractions in comparison to the goal of the event, says Lehmann. “I deal with a lot of corporate planners who won't book in Vegas because people can lose a little bit of focus when they are there. But I'd never had anything like that happen before.”

Not Just for Men

According to Nancy Berkley, president of Berkley Golf Consulting Inc., Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., one mishap that she has seen all too often involves planners forgetting that there are women in the group.

She knows what that feels like: “At a large industry event I attended, it didn't even occur to the organizer that between 10 poercent and 20 percent of the golfers were women. All the T-shirts were in men's sizes, and the prizes were all male-oriented.” She and her fellow female golfers weren't too shocked. “We just said to each other, ‘Oh this is what usually happens.’”

Another signal to women that the golf event organizer forgot to consider them, says Berkley: longest drive competitions in which men and women compete against one another. Why not plan one contest for the women and one for the men? She also advises mixing both sexes in foursomes and considering formats such as scrambles or shambles, which can alleviate some of the pressure of competition. One format that she has seen work particularly well is the “sixsome scramble.” Here, three women and three men make up a sixsome. The round is played like a straight scramble, but with men and women teeing off on alternating holes. The reason it is popular, says Berkley: “It doesn't pit the women against the men.”