For those of us who have grown up playing mostly local public courses, the world of high-end, nationally-ranked private clubs seems very far away, about as accessible as the sun.
It doesn’t have to be that way. With a little foresight, and with the help of the internet, social media, and charity organizations, there are more opportunities now than ever for golfers to fulfill their dreams of playing the country’s finest and most exclusive courses.
The best way we know of to secure a round on the country’s elite courses, including many on the Golf Digest America’s 100 and Second 100 Greatest Courses ranking, is through the annual Take a Swing Fore Batten Golf Auction, beginning on March 15, 2026, and running through March 18.
Muirfiled Village
Courtesy of the club/Jim Mandeville
Golfers from anywhere can place silent bids for (primarily) threesomes at places they’d never otherwise get to play. This year, participating clubs include Oakmont C.C. (ranked No. 5 on America’s 100 Greatest Courses), Sand Hills (No. 8), Chicago G.C. (No. 11), Muirfield Village (No. 19), Olympic Club’s Lake Course (No. 35), Medinah C.C. No. 3 (No. 74), The Tree Farm (No. 130), and the new Tiger Woods’-designed Trout National in New Jersey, to name only a few. International courses include the Tom Doak-designed Tara Iti in New Zealand and the 36-hole Les Bordes in France, featuring the New Course from Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner.
The auction also offers some rare experiences, like four tickets to the Stanford-Notre Dame football game next fall and a Parker McLachlin short game clinic. The most intriguing is two days of golf and lodging at Bandon Dunes with David McLay Kidd, designer of the original Bandon course.
Visit the ForeBatten Foundation website to preview all the auction items that will go live on March 15.
The New Course at Les Bordes
Courtesy of Les Bordes Estate
The Take a Swing Fore Batten Auction raises money for the ForeBatten Foundation. The organization and subsequent auction were started in 2018 by golf architect David Kahn of Jackson Kahn Design and his wife Karen when their twin daughters Amelia and Makenzie were each diagnosed with CLN3 juvenile Batten Disease, a rare, fatal and incurable neurodegenerative disease. To date, the auction has raised over $9 million for research toward potential treatments of Batten. Prior to the foundation’s creation, few resources had been allocated into its study.
“The golf community is almost exclusively responsible for helping raise that amount of money and support,” Kahn says, “and it’s allowed us to generate an incredible amount of awareness about the Batten.”
Golf Digest has been reporting on the Kahn sisters since 2021. Now, Amelia and Makenzie are turning 16 and their birthdays will coincide with the Fore Batten auction this month.
“The typical life expectancy for juvenile Batten disease is somewhere between late teens and early 20s, so they’re gaining on it,” Kahn says. “I guess the best way to say it is that Amelia and Makenzie are hanging in there. We know the road they’re on, we know the trajectory, we know what’s ahead of us and there’s no denying that. To say they’re doing great is not necessarily true, but they’re hanging in and we do have some days with some smiles and some good moments.”
He says recently Amelia, who cannot eat on her own, tasted some ice cream.
The disease has ravaged the girls in unfathomable ways. Amelia and Makenzie are completely blind with no light perception. They suffer from chronic pain and childhood dementia, which, Kahn says “is as brutal as it sounds.” They experience seizures, though treatments have helped minimize them to a degree, and they’ve lost their ability to walk and talk.
“We know the reality of our children’s future, but we just want to be able to do our part to ultimately find a cure for this,” he says. “That’s our mission—to fund critical research that hopefully makes a difference and also supports the Batten community and families into the future.”
It’s a win-win for golfers and those who want to help find treatments and possibly a cure for juvenile Batten disease. Early bidding is now available at the Take a Swing Fore Batten website.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
