[IanD] The people behind Premiere Tours are: Jerry Brown, Bruce Muench and myself. We began the site last Sept 1998. Mainly an idea by Jerry Brown, who asked Bruce and myself to help out, covering the bits he thought we would be good at. I am glad he asked, as I've enjoyed giving some thought to the site over the last 12 months. 

How much time do you spend running the tour each week? 

[IanD] A difficult one, but on average, at least 3 hours a week. This doesn't include playing, just the usual answering any emails from players, and dealing with any circumstance as they occur. Usually, I throw a few pages around too, just to see if anything can be improved, or for my own preferences. 

How long has the Tour been running? 

[IanD] The Tours started officially last November, although the site opened before that, and we ran a few tours before officially launching. Since then, we have expanded the tours as we saw fit and tried to cater for as many formats as we could. 

The introduction of Premiere Tours, was mainly started after Golfcom decided to drop their Online side of LS. Jerry Brown was the main man in control of online tours over there, and ran it without problems. The reasoning behind dropping the online side of their tours is mainly known to Jerry and John Parsons at Golfcom, but they since have added a few online tours of their own over there with a few problems. To me that shows how important Jerry was with his time and efforts. 

Is Premier Tours pay-for-play? Do you offer prizes? 

[IanD] No, we're not pay for play, and never will be. There isn't any concept behind this, its just something that we haven't thought about, and not seen a need for. Basically, we do actually pay for the privilege of running the site. So, although a pay for play would cover our pockets - we are not doing it for anything but the fun. If we could add the sparkle of prizes, personally, I would like to, then we would. But as the site costs on our part, it would be difficult to offer any cash prize. We have and will continue to look at alternate ways of offering prizes though. 

What sort of competitions do you offer? 

[IanD] An in-depth answer needed for this kind of question, and one I like nothing better to talk about. Currently running are Singles (4 rounds of stroke 18 holes) on both Pro and Champ levels, Stableford tours on both Pro and Champ, Powerstroke (4 rounds of stroke 18 holes) again, both Pro and Champ. The other Tours include Teams Pro and Champ, that we regularly change the styles of play using Scrambles, Alt-Shot and Best ball. These run for 4 rounds of 9 holes to aid online play. 

The extra tours that we have, I like to think make us unique to other tour sites, if that's possible. We have the Crazy Tour, running only on Pro, that uses any MOP's that I can create, or any submitted. There have been a variety of MOP's used so far, and we have quite a few that like to try that style too. Another Tour running, that makes us TOTALLY unique, is the EXTREME Tour, for users of LS Extreme. Again, only pro mode is supported at the moment, and we do lack the players for this game, maybe it will catch on later... 

Finally, we hope to introduce a few speciality tours as we go through the months. In November, we start the Match Play Tour, allowing both the clickers and PS'ers to play as one. This kind of tour could easily be added as a permanent tour for the future too. 

Is Premier Tours an Online site? 

[IanD] Yes, the site is ONLINE ONLY. That's another little uniqueness that we like about Premiere, others offer the recorded rounds that were played offline and possibly after several restarts. Any recorded rounds found at Premiere are guaranteed to be played online against another member. 

How many members/regular participants do you have? 

[IanD] Members come and go, and we all see various tour sites drop in membership from time to time. We have approx 600 members listed as joining, but the REAL players that regularly play are more around the 50 +. It is something we would love to increase, and with the release of LS 2000 - who knows. 

What have Premier Tours got planned for the future? 

[IanD] The future of Premiere Tours, is, and always will be with the players that play here. If they want something and suggest it, it usually gets discussed. But, in the interim that allows us to think instead of updating stuff, we have thought of various things that we have added along the way. That will continue to be the case, but ideally, with a bit more automation on the site, we can work on new stuff. 

But, in saying all that and visiting a lot of LS sites out there, I do note some ideas that other sites try to introduce and if they are unsuccessful, I like to try and find out why and possibly work on making them work with Premiere Tours. Seeing a lot of Team sites out there, and the various scope they have for participation, I would like to introduce something around that idea. 

Sticking with what we know though for the time being, we are following a lot of sites and trying to launch a Premiere Cup for the latter part of next year. The details are yet to be worked on, but would include a similiar points accumulated over certain tours between now and then. In trying to reward the regular players, this sometimes scares off the players that don't have the time to play every tour, so I'd like a way to keep everything balanced if that's possible. 

You could do an interview following those questions and or add some questions or answers of your own. Alternatively, you could do a general article along the lines of 'Running a Links tournament site: The inside story'.[IanD] OK  

What do you get personally from helping to run a Links tournament site? 

[IanD] Without wanting to throw caution to the wind, running a tour site isn't too difficult. The main ingredients are time, effort and patience. With having a caring wife, who allows me too much freedom on the net and on the PC, I'm easily caught up in the everyday affairs of a tour site. Jumping online at various times during the day, I always look to see if my email accounts ask something more of me, and if not, then go searching for the ultimate question. Not being a `qualified tecchie' I usually stay away from things I haven't tried myself, but it doesn't stop any of us trying to think of the problems others have found and searching for answers. 

Having others help run the main areas of the site, Jerry concentrating solely on the programming side of things and updating the leaderboards, eases any sort of load on my shoulders, which probably makes me think running a Tour is easier than it is :) Generally, I concentrate upon the webboard, and then looking for any deadlinks or misdirected links. Lately, that aspect of the site doesn't really happen, so I can ease up a lot of my time now with the site. 

But, in saying that, Jerry has some great qualities that even I should be proud of. The time he puts in, is considerably more than me. The round deadlines and new matchups that occur every weekend are done effortlessly by him, and all I see is the new pages on site. The work involved usually always gets overlooked, but the comments that do get made are gratefully received. 

Bruce, who is currently working away, steps in to cover the PS events that are increasing in participation, and will cover either Jerry or myself as things go from time to time. 

The tasks I set myself, are getting more and more involved, and I'm sure I'll enjoy spending more time working on the site in future. My efforts recently are the Crazy Tours, the Extreme Tour updates, and the latest matchplay introduction. Aside from those, my head doesn't stop thinking of other ways to either promote more players joining or coming up with new additions. Pushing these into Jerry's thoughts usually makes my mind up whether its worth the trouble of looking further into. 

Time will tell what happens... 

Thanks Ian!