Phil,
Do you find at least a little irony in the fact that the club you'd be most likely to join doesn't post fees? Do you honestly have no clue as to what the rough costs are? Why is that the one you'd most want to join? Best course, membership, location, amenities? How would them posting their fees affect your desire to join, unless the prices were radically different than your initial ballpark figure? Do you know any members of this club? You don't strike me as the type who's too timid to ask a couple of pertinent questions of them if you were serious about joining.
It seems it varies greatly by location. While I'm generalizing, clubs in good standing in major metro areas, as a rule, don't post prices. For instance, so far I've found 1 club of dozens in the Chicago area that lists a corporate membership price. I'm flabbergasted that guys seem to have no idea of what the costs are. That means 1) you've never belonged to a private club and 2) you don't socialize or work with many people who belong to a private club and 3) you've played very few private clubs and 4) you aren't serious about joining anyway. Guys (not Phil ) are falling all over themselves defending the rights of clubs to exclude whoever they want and trotting out freedom of association rights in First Amendment cases on one hand, yet at the same time get their panties in a bunch if the same club doesn't post the locker and range ball fee on their website? Give me a break. CLUBS ARE NOT FAILING BECAUSE THEY DON'T POST PRICING FOR EVERYONE TO SEE. Rant over...
Jud:
This is all an intellectual exercise for me; I cannot see any circumstances in the next decade where I would join a club locally. On the other hand, if I were to consider it (as I mentioned earlier in this thread), I don't think I'd have too much trouble finding out enough details of a particular club to get a decent idea of what I was getting into.
But your current residence and mine I think are pretty good test cases for Sweeney's original query. Madison certainly doesn't have the kind of quality (GCA speaking
) private clubs that you'd find in Philly, Chicago or Westchester County. But it has five private clubs of varying quality, three of which I'd be happy to play regularly as a club member. What this area does have is the kind of thing Tom Doak mentioned -- a large number of daily fee courses that surely compete against the privates as a choice for golfers in the area (that weren't around 25 years ago). And Wisconsin has a bunch of high-quality CCFADs (with more to come
) that provide a top-flight experience -- both in the golf quality and overall amenities -- that are another layer of competition for the privates around here. A relatively golf-centric person moving to Madison has to weigh all of that in deciding whether or not s/he wants to join a club. I'm glad to see there are at least a couple of local clubs that seem to recognize that, and provide some financial details at the click of a button.
Chicago seems even more of a case for doing so: a bunch (really, quite a lot...) of quality privates, a public golf scene that seems somewhat indifferent, and a CCFAD landscape that is mixed ((Harborside and Thunderhawk? I'll take Bonnie Brook; we'll both take Spring Valley, arguably a suburb if you stretch the definition....
). So what's Thurman or Doxey to do when he gets promoted to a job in Chicago that affords him the opportunity to join a club? OK, it doesn't take a genius to figure out he's not getting into Chicago GC or Old Elm for a while. But how to distinguish among the others? You and I might know the differences pretty well (as would Thurman), but we're geeks and therefore outliers; what about the guy who just wants to join a club for all the right reasons, but doesn't want to waste his investment on what might turn out to be the wrong choice? Might providing some kind of public information be worth it in the long run for some clubs?