The Great Debate

Ready to take the plunge into the world of private golf clubs? Here’s the skinny on where and how you could join – if you so desire – and what you’ll be up against

“I would never join a club that would have me as a member.”
– Groucho Marx

By Bob Albright

Nobody knows if the legendary mustachioed comic ever swung an 8-iron, but it’s a safe bet that with his ever-present cigar and abrasive sense of humor, lining up sponsors for entrance into a swishy private country club was never high on his priority list.

But as we tiptoe through August and towards the fall, soon the eternal questions will once again crop up with many a public golfer looking to take the hobby, now turned obsession, to the next level.

Is it time to finally move the clubs from the trunk and into a locker? Is it time to find a course where 18 holes are divisible by four hours, not the better part of a day? Is it time to finally find a place where “tee time” involves china, and not a stressed out starter?

In short, is it time to join the club?

Despite a national trend that shows private club membership waning, country club life in the Northeast and on the North Shore in particular, continues to be the ultimate golfer’s dream. As the accompanying chart bears out, the costs can be prohibitive and the admissions process sometimes daunting, but few will dispute that once you’re in the club, you’re playing a whole different brand of golf. Whether it is a full-fledged membership to one of the area’s premier private venues, a semi-private membership, or simply a seasonal pass, there are a lot of pros and cons to consider before you bid adieu to your daily fee golf existence.

WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME

Of all the obvious selling points associated with a membership at pristine Tedesco Country Club in Marblehead, head professional Bob Green harkens back to the famed sitcom centered on a little watering hole off Beacon Street.

“What do they say in Cheers? You want to go to a place where everyone knows your name. That’s really true and that’s how we approach things here,” Green says. “Everybody likes to be identified and it puts them at ease knowing that they’re in a consistent situation that doesn’t change.”

It’s not a sales pitch, but a reality for Green, who is in his 33rd year at the club, the last 26 as head pro. It’s a span that has seen Green watch junior members become productive full time members, who in turn are now bringing their kids by his pro shop.

“I think what we’re able to give is a much more personal relationship with the golfers. We get to know their golf games much better and what they need to improve,” he says. “I think there are a lot of great instructors at public courses, but what we’re able to do is make the instruction more easily available because of our size.”

The one-on-one relationship that Green enjoys with so many of his members is just one of the extras that comes with playing a premier course like Tedesco. Locker rooms, bag storage, fine dining, a hearty tournament schedule and never having to wait more than a couple minutes to tee off are also contributing factors to why the club hasn’t needed to take any new golf membership applications since 1998.

Perks like these, with the addition of top-notch swimming and tennis facilities at most clubs, are what keeps many local private clubs’ membership rosters overflowing. While the over-saturation of courses in the South and Midwest has eliminated waiting lists at many a club, it’s still a major consideration for a prospective member to weigh here on the North Shore.

WAITING GAME

Ray Jacques can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Five years after being accepted as a member and added to the waiting list at the Salem Country Club, he’s still doing just that - waiting. Jacques, who grew up in Peabody caddying at the course, isn’t about to complain, however. Especially considering the stature of some of the guys who’ve waited in line before him.

“Hey, they made Ray Bourque wait. They made Dwight Evans wait. It’s the same for everybody,” says Jacques, who figures he has another three years to go.

Jacques’ plight will always be the case at prestigious clubs, especially those like Salem, Myopia Hunt Club and Essex County Club, which will forever be insulated from national trends due to their stature and history. But let’s face it; being a member-in-waiting at the Donald Ross classic in Peabody isn’t the worst lot in life either. Jacques still gets to play the course three times a month and his children have been able to avail themselves of the top-notch youth golf clinics offered by head pro Kevin Wood and his staff.

The one big advantage Jacques is missing out on, however, is the ability to bring guests to the course. As president of New England Schooner Inc., a financial planning company based right down the street from the club on Centennial Drive, he’s well aware of the kind of cache a round at Salem brings.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re in a crowd or at a business meeting, when you mention Salem Country Club the heads turn and the stories start to fly,” says Jacques, a former standout hockey player for the University of Maine in the ’80s. “It gives you a little bit of credibility.”

CUTTING THROUGH THE 'BUSHWOOD' MYSTIQUE

While country clubs will forever be linked with the fictitious and elitist Bushwood Country Club portrayed in golf cult classic, Caddyshack, many say the movie does not jibe with the inner workings at most private clubs today.

“I think the days of having a prospective member having to sit in front of a large group and go through a screening process or where a young couple has to worry if they are going to ‘fit in’ is a thing of the past,” says Helene Scott, Membership Director at the Ipswich Country Club.

Membership at Ipswich CC, now in its 15th year and boasting a very challenging Robert Trent Jones layout, is typical of the process at most modern clubs. Scott says about 70 percent of new members come from existing members’ nominations. Prospective members need to be nominated by a current member, which will, in turn, get them an invitation from Scott to join. The invitation will be followed by an interview with various reference checks – financial and personal – and if everything checks out a formal application to join is issued.

“You would be crazy to say that private clubs are for everyone,” says Scott. “But there’s a certain and consistent market out there which it appeals to and makes a lot of sense for.

“There are a lot of consumers out there who think that private golf is way out of their market, but when you start to add up all the expenses they already incur to play the game and the overall quality of that experience that they are receiving it starts to make a lot of sense.”

Especially at clubs like the Sheraton Ferncroft in Danvers, which boasts no waiting list at all and doesn’t require a nomination by a current member. Suffice it to say it’s a far different story if you have designs on joining either the Myopia or the Essex CC, where the membership is internally driven and turns over just about as often as the Red Sox find themselves in the World Series.

The admissions process at Salem is also a little more involved, with prospective members needing two nominations in addition to several letters written to gain an interview. Jacques recalls being fairly nervous when he was first summoned for his interview, but also recalls being quickly put to ease.

“I was a bit worked up and I remember putting on the coat and tie to meet with the committee, but right off everybody was all smiles and very welcoming,” Jacques remembers. “I just love going there, I love the people. There’s no ‘Bushwood mentality’, which I’ll admit I felt at another club I looked at.”

Clubs like Ipswich CC and the Ferncroft also differ from clubs like Salem, Essex and Tedesco in that corporations instead of the general membership own them. ClubCorp, an industry giant that operates more than 200 golf clubs, courses and resorts worldwide, owns Ipswich.

An advantage to that kind of association is that members can sign on for a plan to allow them access to that network of clubs, thus nullifying a great reservation of many prospective members: the fact that they’ll be tied to just one course because of the sizeable financial investment they’ve made. Another benefit to corporate owned clubs is that they avoid the sometimes-hefty assessments that members can be hit with for capital improvements.

For instance, ClubCorp recently put $3.1 million into course and clubhouse improvements at Ipswich without any of the cost being passed on to the membership.

“I don’t think there are many other private clubs where that would happen,” Scott points out.

The flipside, of course, is that members at corporately owned clubs do not enjoy the same voice and control over their club’s direction. Clubs change hands all the time, sometimes leaving members with a far different environment than the one that attracted them initially.

A common misconception about joining a private club is that you’re forced to sign up for one general all-inclusive and pricey membership when your needs may be quite specific. While that is the case at some clubs, most offer a myriad of options, whether it’s a golf-only membership, social and clubhouse memberships or swim, tennis and fitness facility plans.

It can be as plain and simple as finding a place to hit balls, and not much more, as Ken Whalley has found at Ferncroft. A strong amateur player who plays a full slate of MGA and regional events each summer, the Topsfield resident has held a par-3 membership at the Ferncroft for the last six years, which also gives him unlimited use of the practice facilities.

“For someone in my situation it’s perfect,” says Whalley, who figures he’ll get his fill of 18-hole rounds each summer in qualifiers and tournaments. “It’s short money and very convenient. To be honest, I mostly use the practice facility, which I like because they use good balls, which is not always the case at ranges.”

For Whalley, who has a couple young children, it’s a logical fast-food approach to circumventing what otherwise could be a lengthy four-course meal.

“Time is a huge thing now a days and I’m like a lot of guys with young families who just don’t have time to spend all Saturday at a course. This plan works for me, but my situation is not the typical one.”

SEMI-PRIVATE CLUBS MAKE SENSE FOR MANY

A popular alternative to sinking a year’s worth of college tuition – or more – in initiation fees at a private course is to go the semi-private route. The North Shore is loaded with public clubs, such as Beverly Golf & Tennis Club, Wenham and Gannon Municipal, that also offer memberships on a yearly basis to golfers at a small fraction of the private price tag.

At Beverly, members have blocks of tee times set aside on weekends and holidays as well as the ability to make tee times up to a week in advance. Add that to a healthy schedule of tournaments, a testy layout and a tight-knit clubhouse environment and it’s no surprise that the well-played course currently has a three-year waiting list.

“Originally, I joined Beverly Golf and Tennis because of the people that were there,” says Steve Swedberg, who has been a member at the Beverly landmark since 1981. “Finding a good group of guys to play with was probably the first thing I was looking for. Of course if you can find a nice course to do that at as well, then that’s all the better.”

Swedberg, who has won three straight club championships and qualified for the 2001 U.S. Senior Open, gives the former more weight, however. He joined Ipswich when it first opened back in 1989, but did not renew despite a healthy admiration for the course’s superior landscape.

“In the end it just didn’t make sense for me,” he said. “At the end of the year I had played about 13 rounds there and about 80 at Beverly because those were the guys that I wanted to play with.”

While that group has largely stayed the same over the years, the course’s ownership and playing condition hasn’t, which helps illustrate some of the significant drawbacks to a semi-private membership.

First, whether you’re a member or not, you’re still playing a public course and one that likely gets far heavier traffic than a private course. That not only translates into a slower pace of play, but also into course conditions that don’t measure up to those at a private course that not only hosts far fewer rounds, but sinks far more money into course maintenance.

“When I joined [Beverly] it almost had that feel of a private club; now it is in bit of a transition period,” said Swedberg, a Danvers resident. “It’s more consistent at a private club, whereas at a semi-private club things can change much more rapidly.”

PUBLIC AND PROUD OF IT

A Cheers parallel can also be made for the large segment of golfers that prefer to go the Sam Malone route and play the large and ever-increasing field of new and seductive courses that catch their eye, forgoing the commitment to just one course. With top-flight daily fee courses cropping up throughout the state and in New Hampshire and Maine, it is indeed a prime time to be a “free agent” so to speak.

Others, like Salem’s Tommy Doyle, however, have found just the public experience they’re looking for within a 3-wood of their back porch.

Doyle can be found throughout the summer and most of the fall at Olde Salem Greens, the quintessential public course. While it would be easy to put the municipal course into the, “bar with nine holes attached” category, that would sell the course’s challenging layout and its rabid and talented clientele short.

“There’s almost an inner-club atmosphere with guys who take real pride in the club,” says Doyle, who serves on the golf committee at the course. “It’s all self-run and with that you get the same feeling that you would with a private club.”

He conceded that a lot of the other similarities with a private course do indeed end there.

“At a country club you can play 18 holes in four hours. Here, you can often spend three hours playing nine,” said Doyle. “There’s no locker room and you’re not going to get catered to a lot. There’s no big dinners or anything like that, but if you’re just looking for a great place to hang out with a good group of guys this is it.”

Ever since the ball rolled through Buckner’s legs in 1986, Ron Harwood has been rolling his ball on Far Corner’s quirky greens in West Boxford as a season pass holder. Along the way he has collected five club championships and even more life-long golfing friendships forged through countless spirited weekend tournaments with fellow members, who were grandfathered in for the season passes that are no longer offered by the club.

“You get a group that you become very comfortable with,” says Harwood, of his group of 14-to-22 regulars who tee it up on weekend mornings at the always-bustling course. “You joke around and hoot and holler a little bit. One guy, who’s a 15-handicap, made a hole-in-one recently and we rode him for two weeks.”

Harwood, who works for Gillette and also has a thriving pool cleaning business, says it’s that type of give and take and good-natured ribbing that is a big part of the reason he shelled out the $1,400 and change again this year for a seasonal pass. He says that many of that weekend group also goes on yearly golf outings to Myrtle Beach and Lake Morey, Vermont.

“It’s a nice group. We’re all still a little humble. None of us are what you would call ‘rich-rich.’ Most of us come from two-income households.”

DUAL EXISTENCE

If there is anyone who can hold court on the difference between the public and private experience it’s Bruce McLaughlin. The 69-year-old retiree from Salem joined Kernwood Country Club five years ago, but that didn’t mean he turned his back on his regular morning league of lifelong friends at Olde Salem Greens. Instead, he squeezes seven-to-eight rounds a week combined at the two courses, which share little in common other than a zip code.

The biggest difference? McLaughlin says it starts with the decibel level on the first tee.

“You’ve got all this jibber jabber on the first hole at Muni,” says McLaughlin of his Salem Muni morning group, which lets the barbs and Titleists fly with the same frequency. “It’s the kind of thing that if they all do get quiet, you can’t hit because you’re not used to it.”

Suffice it to say, things are a tad quieter on the first tee at Kernwood.

“Someone asked me about five years ago where I would go if I could just choose one and I told him Muni hands down. Now, I don’t know what I would say,” says McLaughlin, who had a two-year wait to get into the club. “We really didn’t know a lot of the members when we joined, but they’ve been so welcoming that we really feel at home there.

“We use the pool a lot at Kernwood with our grandchildren, the dining is superb and the course is unbelievable. What I tell people now is that I’m very fortunate to have both.”

The questions have also come from his buddies at Olde Salem, many of whom he has brought over to the other side of town for a round.

“I hope to eventually bring everyone in the group over so they can experience it,” said McLaughlin. “The thing that gets them is the pace and condition of the greens. They all ask me how and I can come back and play Muni after playing those.”

But he does. McLaughlin says he plans to keep showing up at Muni five days a week for the jokes and nicknames alone and with his three dollars in hand to throw into the daily pot. One guy who is deemed by McLaughlin and his cohorts to take the game a little too seriously has been dubbed “Chuckles.” Another, who favors the 1970s style of high-riding shorts, is simply referred to as, “Legs.”

Bob Green is right. Ultimately, everybody does want to go to a place where everybody knows their name – even if it’s not the one on their birth certificate.