Looking into a Golf Membership - Have Some Questions

[chris408]

Just wondering for those of you who are members of a club, have you found it worth it? And what are your approximate membership fees per year? And is it for an 9, 18 or more? And how often do you play?

I'm looking around locally at club memberships and prices vary between 9 & 18 hole courses. I found a 9 hole for about $2700 annually. Main benefits are unlimited use of the course, grass range and short-game practice areas.

[DJYoshi]

I wish it were that cheap here. I'm interested in 5 of northern NJ's most prestigious cc's
Montclair Golf Club
Upper Montclair Country Club
NJ National Country Club
Baltusrol
and Essex County Country Club

the cheapest so far is: $40k bond. 8500 in annual dues.
that doesn't include anything else!

Golf club memberships are cool..but unless you can go and play there 5 days a week, it just doesn't seem worth it.... and i can play 5 days a week..but in diff locations around.

all my friends that are cc members say it was cool...b/c they got in cheap and or were grandfathered in

[m11]

$850/ year for membership at the University of Florida GC

definitely worth it. Greens fees and use of the facilities are included. Golf carts are extra.

[iacas]

We've had this discussion before. Please do a search.

I've folded it into the first one I saw that fit.

[Cody]

Jr membership(under 18 which i fall out of in 4 months) is $500 a year for unlimited greens and range.

[Big Padrigo]

I joined my club within a week of moving here. It recently went private but hasn't affected my monthly dues, only a small $10 increase for food that gets spent anyways. My wife plays as well so we have a family deal where unlimited golf, free use of range and free carts costs $350 per month. In terms of green fees at this club it's equal to my wife and I playing together on a weekend twice in a month. We get full use out of our membership and play one of the best courses in our area for a great price.

[Grogger31]

Living in CT, club memberships are outrageously expensive. The best deal I can get around me is:

$10,000 initiation fee
$4,000/year for a single member
$150/month minimum in food

Believe it or not, this is on the cheap. Oh, did I mention the 5 year waiting list???

[Eore]

Living in CT, club memberships are outrageously expensive. The best deal I can get around me is:

thats stupid!

[rjfan91]

I am a full member at an ok course. It costs $1500/year and leaves me only paying a cart fee ($16/18 holes). It basically saves me $42 off each round I play. I play roughly 6 or 7 rounds a month at this course, so it works out for me. I don't regret joining because it allowed me to meet and join a golf association linked to the course. This introduced me to a large group of folks to play with.

http://www.heronridge.com

[sabram]

The economics of joining a club and evaluating whether it is worth the cost is a personal thing and varies greatly based on location. However, once you join a private club you will likely never regret it (other than the $$). The ability to play whenever you want, the much faster pace of play and the great conditioning are three big benefits that are hard to put a price on.

[joshtpa]

The economics of joining a club and evaluating whether it is worth the cost is a personal thing and varies greatly based on location. However, once you join a private club you will likely never regret it (other than the $$). The ability to play whenever you want, the much faster pace of play and the great conditioning are three big benefits that are hard to put a price on.

Perfectly well said. Personally, I prefer to play at a private club. Faster play, better greens and course IMHO. Not always the case, but in FL where i play, the public courses can get pretty hacked up. With the exceptions of places like Innisbrook and TPC. The good public courses are upwards of a couple hundred bucks per round. So for me the private course was a no brainer. We paid 3500 initiation, and it costs us $240 per month. That does not include cart fees, but we have our own. Because our course is part of CCA, we also get certain privileges around the country when we travel at tons of other clubs. It is a personal thing and can only be decided by each individual.

[Jeepthrills]

There is no question that the benefits you listed are what makes the private club option so appealing. The biggest key is having the time to actually play. My job does not permit the early afternoon round. If my schedule were more flexible and I could get in the extra rounds, I would absolutely look at joining a club for all the reasons listed above.

OK, now I'm guilty of quoting myself. One of the big hurdles for me in joining a club has been the time needed to make the fee worthwhile. For the past 15 years I have been running health clubs. That is not a 9-5 job. In fact it can often times be a 5-9 job. Anyway, I just resigned this morning. I have accepted a full time position teaching High School Sports Medicine. My normal schedule will be 7 AM to 3 PM Monday through Friday. I likely won't join a club right away, but will look into a season pass of some sort. We did come up for membership at a course by my in-laws place in West Michigan. My schedule had kept me from getting over there as much as I would have liked. With 10 weeks off in the Summer now, that will change. The membership is cheap. To pay for itself I would only need to play 15+ 18 hole rounds. 5 years ago I hit that easily. The last 4 years have been a different story. Not anymore.

[ElvisG]

To be honest, I wouldn't probably start playing golf if it was that expensive to me.

$150 quarter / $350 a year Membership
$4.50 9 holes / $9.00 18 holes Cart fees

Playing golf on a military base is cheap.

[Richie3Jack]

I'm not a member here in Atlanta because the only courses I could afford to join just are not feasible because of location. If I had it up to me, I would probably play about 4 times a week (one weekday + Fri-Sun). But the closest, affordable course that's worth playing is about 30 miles away. This actually wouldn't be a problem if I lived in a normal city with reasonable traffic. But if I wanted to go from getting off at work around 5:30pm to the course, I may not arrive at the course until 7:00pm. By then it's dark and that rules out at least 2 of the days.

I generally like courses that are private because there's usually less people on the course and golfers knowing what they are doing, so you play faster rounds, golfers repair ball marks, don't scuff their feet on the greens, etc. So that's a reason to me for joining a private course over just paying greens fees for a public course. But you really need to do what makes you the happy, because golf is there for enjoyment.





3JACK

[RickPro]

no need to get a membership, just pay for golf per round. that was one of the biggest mistakes i have made before. all that money i spent, but only to play 1 course. i dont know about you, but i like to test my skills at other courses. i like have a variety of courses to play at.

[jrode]

At the local course in my town if you're a student with valid student status (under the age of 23) it's $250 for a membership which is a pretty solid deal, especially when you have summers off and can get to the course a lot. I don't have a membership because I just recently got back into golf and am going to be moving soon, otherwise I'd probably get one. The new member special price is $500 and I think every year after that is $750. I find those prices to be pretty reasonable, the problem is they charge you so damn much for a cart if that's the route you want to go. Seasonal cart rental for one seat is $460 or you can get a discounted daily rental of $9 for 9 holes or $14 for 18 holes. I'm not lazy and I'm in pretty good shape, but I'll be the first to tell you that I don't enjoy walking 18, carrying my own clubs, especially in the humid summer months we get here.

[gortyl]

I absolutely love my club. It is, what I consider, pretty damn expensive but that's part of being a member at a really nice club. If you're trying to join based on cost-savings, then you're probably out of luck save for some public course with a discount if you buy an annual package. And I still play other courses, in fact 8 of my last 20 rounds have been on other courses. Here are some of the benefits that my wife and I enjoy:

- Casual dining. We don't have kiddos yet so we tend to eat out 90% of the time. They'll make us whatever we want, on-menu or off-menu.
- Pool. My wife loves to lay out at the pool and does so about twice a week from Memorial Day to Labor Day. This will be nice when we have kids too.
- Tee times. My club doesn't have tee times, you just show up. I've never waited more than 10 minutes to tee off and I've played there over 50 times this year. If #1 is backed up, you can scoot over to #10 or since it's a private club, you can shoot over to #3 or #12 or wherever.
- Club fitting. My club does free club fitting for members.
- Merchandise/Equipment. They can order me anything I want including logo balls, different clubs, a particular pair of shoes, a rangefinder - all of which I've purchased since joining. And I get a 20% discount as a member. Anything I buy just goes on my monthly bill, no need for a receipt or signing anything and no return policy to worry about.
- Lessons. My lessons with the head pro are $40/hour, quite a bit better than the $150/hour I was paying another guy before joining.
- Practice. I love to practice and my club has a full grass range, one huge putting green, two short game areas that include bunkers and chipping areas. All included. We only get 12-14k rounds per year, so sometimes I'll even go play 9 and just drop 10 balls on a particular spot that I've been having trouble with and won't have anyone come up on me for 15 minutes or more.
- Demo Days. Once a year we have 6-7 club manufacturers come out so that we can all try out their clubs, all day event. Other 364 days of the year, we have access to dozens of demo clubs (irons, iron sets, wedges, woods, putters) to try out.
- Reciprocity. I travel quite a bit so my pro has set me up to play other private clubs across the country like Medinah, Congressional, Southern Hills.
- Access to Private Rooms. I threw my dad a surprise 60th birthday party in one of the rooms at the club. It fit 50 people comfortably, had a giant fireplace and awesome views of the river valley. The room rental didn't cost anything (obviously I pay for that right with my monthly dues). There are other rooms available that can hold up to 500 (weddings, conventions, etc.).
- Men's Card Room. It's a men-only room with two flat-panels and fully stocked bar. Great place to bring friends, find a card game, watch big sporting events or just hang out.
- Games. You can always find a game at my club. There's a 7am group, a 8:30am group, Thursday AM group, Thursday PM group, Friday PM group and many others.
- Shoe shines. I love having clean, shiny shoes and they do this.
- Clean clubs. After every round, they clean my clubs.
- No tipping. # 1 rule of the club is that you can't tip anyone except a caddie and that includes wait staf at the restaurant ($100 dinner? No tip). Instead, we pay $75/month that covers all of this. I dig that.
- Access to Caddies. Don't always use them, but like throwing the high school kids some money and hearing about what's going on with them plus I don't lose any balls!
- Awesome service. All of the staff knows us and greets us by name every time they see us. They know what beer I drink and that my wife wants her water with no ice and that I need extra ketchup if I order fries . I had an "accident" with my FT-3 driver Wednesday and it snapped in half. As I made the turn from 9 to 10, I saw my head pro giving a lesson. I didn't interrupt, just showed him the two pieces and put them in his cart. By the time I was getting to #10 tee, the assistant pro was walking up and handed me a demo FT-5. I love that kind of service.
- Prestige. This wasn't a big factor for us. No one really has heard of my club outside of STL, so there's no prestige in the name (we are considered at the top of the "tier 2" clubs in the area). But I am kind of proud to take my mom and dad to the club or friends who come in town.

OK, who wants to join? Seriously, if you are a golf junkie like me and can afford a club, I don't see a down side to it as long as you keep it real and play other courses from time to time.

[jrode]

I absolutely love my club. It is, what I consider, pretty damn expensive but that's part of being a member at a really nice club. If you're trying to join based on cost-savings, then you're probably out of luck save for some public course with a discount if you buy an annual package. And I still play other courses, in fact 8 of my last 20 rounds have been on other courses. Here are some of the benefits that my wife and I enjoy:

Golf is the most expensive sport to get into and I'm willing to bet that not a lot of people here have the disposable income to join a club

and still go around to pay daily fees at other courses. It's just not reasonable for a lot of people.