The Future Of Golf Club Membership

Roderick Easdale speaks to a host of different facilities to build a picture of the state of the golf club industry

When I first golfed as an adult, I would rise at 6am on a weekend, go downstairs and pick up the phone. I would call repeatedly until I eventually got through – this tended to be sometime around 7.20am – to book a tee time from the limited selection that was left by then. Playing a weekly game of golf at the weekend at my local 18-hole pay-and-play course required this rigmarole each time.

This was the early 1990s. The course, at that stage, had no clubhouse and took no members. So when another pay-and-play course opened up, I joined that as a member. It was my first club and gave me my first handicap. The membership was oversubscribed from the start. The design was unexciting and the maintenance a touch iffy in parts, but the club was popular and busy.

Soon, this course will become a housing development. My nephews’ first club, a beautiful par-3 nine-holer, closed last winter. One of the other local clubs we would play occasionally – another nine-holer – also shut down around the same time last year. This eradication is happening all over. In these pages recently, Elliott Heath wrote movingly of playing a final round at his first club, which was also closing.

The question is, then, can the traditional stand-alone golf club, one which relies simply upon golf and golfers, survive? If so how? Or do golf clubs now need to be part of some wider enterprise?

Littlestone GC has had some distinguished committeemen – at one stage prime minister Herbert Asquith was its captain while the leader of the opposition, Arthur Balfour, was its president. But in 2014, the secretary role was abolished and business managers were brought in.