THE curious obsession with exclusivity in golf has always intrigued me. The more seasoned golfers of the world seem to have simply accepted it as part of playing the sport, yet younger golfers (myself included) display no real inclination or desire for the status and perks that are associated with high-end golf. I have many friends who work in finance and dream of Ferraris and yachts. TV shows like “Billions” and “Suits” have made the lifestyles of the rich and famous more accessible and desirable than ever, yet I’d hazard a guess there are very few golfers younger than 45 who have their sights set on one day, just maybe, obtaining a membership at, say, The Australian Golf Club.
And there lies the biggest problem with the sport right now. There’s a desire to play golf, and there’s a desire to put in the time and commitment to learning it. After all, the beauty of golf is that, despite how infuriatingly difficult it is, anyone can learn it as they go along. But where’s the desire to join a club, get your handicap and slowly become a respected member over the decades? That may have been seen as a noble quest 20 or 30 years ago, but in an age of instant gratification, instant friendships and social networks on a scale never seen before, this isn’t something likely to ever appeal to the masses until the situation is given a shake-up.
Where this leads the future of golf is an interesting area to contemplate. People will go back and forth forever on how and where to grow the sport. In fact, they’ll go back and forth on whether the sport needs to be actively ‘grown’ at all. But the future of the golf club has been something of an oversight in this. Few programs are out there to get prospective golfers actively joining clubs, with more time and energy spent (probably rightly so) on getting people playing and learning the sport at a grassroots level. Very few young golfers are inclined to even contemplate joining a club as part of their development, which is worrying considering the average age of a golf club member in Australia is 56 (a figure that’s rising), and club memberships are decreasing year-on-year.
Overcoming Roadblocks
Finding the answer is a matter of looking at the problems on an institutional level. Where are the roadblocks to starting your journey in golf with a club membership? What is there, if anything, to entice younger golfers to stop 
playing the social game and join a club? How likely are older, more prestigious golf clubs to change their ways? To find out, we took a look at the membership process of about a dozen clubs, both private and public, across Australia’s major cities.
We decided to take a slightly more holistic approach to our findings, choosing a range of mid-to-high-end and low-end clubs to get the broadest spectrum of clubs possible.
The first thing that surprised me personally was that it’s actually relatively easy to obtain online all the information you need regarding a membership. Of the dozen or so courses we contacted, all of them had their membership fees and application forms easily accessible on their website. When it comes to actually joining though, this is where the prospective golfer starts to hit a snag or two.
All of the private courses contacted had some kind of vetting process where prospective members needed not only a proposer, but also in some cases a seconder to be considered for membership. If this wasn’t available, some offered the choice of an interview, just so they could deem you worthy to give them your hard-earned thousands of dollars. With a new influx of younger golfers, a younger mindset and belief system is likely to follow, and I’m not convinced this system will continue to be relevant when Gen-Y and beyond start to become a larger portion of paying players.
Interestingly, it was these courses, with their more structured membership options, that generally offered the most to younger golfers and those looking to attain an entry-level membership with playing access. In fact, with a range of flexible memberships and discounted memberships being offered to those under the age of 30, there were encouraging signs overall that golf clubs are realising they must start catering to the needs and wants of the younger golfer if they want to survive.
Public course memberships are cheaper, generally somewhere between $200 and $1,000 a year for a full playing membership, but now that you can join a social club and play a number of great courses for a flat rate, they don’t offer much bang for your buck when you compare the two.
Of course, many public courses are hamstrung in what they can provide as they rely on green fees for their entire operation, but the problem is that there’s no real middle ground. What options are there for the career-driven 20-something who wants to get into the game more seriously after a few rounds? Right now, they can either fork out for an expensive membership, or pay monthly and perhaps get a couple of discounted lessons and range-ball buckets for their troubles. This isn’t exactly enticing, but there lies a deeper problem.
Starting to play or watch any sport should always be an emotional investment as much as a physical or financial one. When you join a football club or sign up to play entry-level cricket for the first time, part of what you get in your registration fee is something you simply can’t put a price on. Sure, you might receive a welcome pack in the same way that you might get a few introductory buckets of balls at a golf club, but what you also intrinsically receive is the feeling of family. You enjoy camaraderie, a new set of friends and a new set of ‘teammates’. Everyone knows this, and therefore people are happy to fork out hundreds of dollars, year after year, to sign up for their respective sports.
Creating this connection and building a community of young, connected golfers is exactly what these golf clubs should be doing. For the first time ever, younger golfers are connecting with each other through apps and social media, and yet traditional golf clubs have reacted to this with nothing more than confused head scratching. Offering options such as youth memberships and flexible memberships might provide a cosmetic solution to the problem of dwindling memberships, but the answer comes in creating the desire of people to join.
It comes in fostering communities that go beyond the regulars at the golf club bar on a Saturday night. It’s about nurturing communities that young people resonate with and want to be included in; communities of “golfers”, not simply young people who happen to play golf. Build the framework for this and we’ll see golf flourish on all levels as the decades roll on.
