"Why Won't Millenials Join Country Clubs?"

[Mike Hendren]

Is it possible that today's millenials are more sociable and don't need the structure of a country club to form relationships?  I wonder because I've been a member of two clubs and never bothered forming a friendship at either one.  I didn't need to - I have some of the greatest friends in the world, made mostly through my Sunday School class.

Mike 

[Alex Miller]

Is it possible that today's millenials are more sociable and don't need the structure of a country club to form relationships?  I wonder because I've been a member of two clubs and never bothered forming a friendship at either one.  I didn't need to - I have some of the greatest friends in the world, made mostly through my Sunday School class.

Mike

Yesterday's Sunday School is today's social media. Ok not exactly, but connections nowadays are endless and the social aspect of joining a club factors very little in the decision for me and my peers I think. Not that the general friendliness and socialness of the club doesn't matter, but it is not part of the value proposition to today's potential members.


If I may continue to be a resident millenial, after figuring out how to make it financially viable (which, mostly living in metro areas it rarely is given cost of housing/membership) the following are the biggest factors to whether I'd like to join:

• Quality of golf course compared to public golf options
• Time-saved from playing in sub 4 hours vs 5+ public rounds
• Availability of tee times or lack thereof, and unlimited practice facilities
• Food and Drink and a good place to enjoy them
• Amenities complimentary to golf: locker, showers, steam room, gym
• General vibe of the place - welcoming to me and my guests and no one is treated with disrespect including and importantly the staff
• Social Scene and opportunity to network / make friends

Ironically the order of what I value most today as a member may be inverse to what I valued when making the decision, but that is the value of hindsight and something that prospective members don't often have.

[John McCarthy]

Millennials get a bad rap but there are forces afoot in every first world country that makes family formation difficult.  Golf clubs (Butlers and Crooked Sticks) obviously do not deal with this but a young mom with her kids hanging out at the cc pool all summer with a group of friends...well that was nice when women did not work and actually had children.  Women who work do not appreciate a husband playing 56 holes on a weekend.  And men who are professionals (most cc members are professionals) work more now than ever.  Parents are expected to be at every practice and game...gone are the days of taking up a sport in fifth grade.  It starts in kindergarten.  Nevermind student loans compounding quarterly and housing costs. 


Just like everything else they have neither the time nor inclination. 

[Peter Sayegh]

Is it possible that today's millenials are more sociable and don't need the structure of a country club to form relationships?  I wonder because I've been a member of two clubs and never bothered forming a friendship at either one.  I didn't need to - I have some of the greatest friends in the world, made mostly through my Sunday School class.

Mike

i dont know if they are more sociable-perhaps sociable in less structured or centralized ways. also, how many selfies/pics can one post with the same hole or dining room in the background before one is an instagram afterthought?i also wonder how many of them are smart enough to spend their "golf" money on new courses and trips while they have more flexibility in their lives-before they are encumbered with a mortgage/kids/career.

[jeffwarne]

...gone are the days of taking up a sport in fifth grade.  It starts in kindergarten. 

At least thats what a moonlighting third rate travel Coach would have you believe...
He has to peddle that nonsense but you dont have to believe it...


Lots in that paragraph is mostly true, but much(some) of it is the result of choices(not saying they are easy choices)....and being a member of a club is yet another choice-perhaps made difficult by other choices.

[Ben Sims]

As an elder millennial, I’d first like to point out that we’ll trade a couple of draft picks for Kavanaugh. We invented internet trolling and yet he, a boomer, has perfected it here in this thread.


As for why we don’t join golf clubs? Beats me. I’ve joined three and quit for different reasons each time. What I do know is that speaking generally about the millennial generation is a sure fire way to miss the boat completely. It seems that with a generation as wide as is normally accepted for millennials, birth years early 80’s to late 90’s, you’re bound to miss something by stereotyping that large of a demographic.


Me personally, gravitating away from golf and losing the desire to join a club was preceded by kids and continues  as my kids age and time becomes limited. I can own the Cypress Point of mountain bikes for little more than the initiation fee of a Doak 4. What’s more, I stay in better shape by riding a bike or going to a good gym. And when the snow falls, it’s not like I was playing golf anyway. Skiing then becomes the major focus of the family during leisure time for our family.


All that to say this. Golf clubs are expensive. They take up a lot of time. They limit discretionary income to a limited activity. They have a whole mess of people that folks in my generation don’t always like to be around. The food generally isn’t as good or inventive as the food truck lot down the road. Like Tom said, it’s just easier not to join one.


By the way, do I get participation trophy for posting in this thread?

[Thomas Dai]

Curious. If millennial folks are not joining and presumably there’s a number of leavers each year too, then where does the $ come from for the CC to continue to operate? Demand and supply and all that.
Atb

[John Kavanaugh]

Clubs become less private every year. First it was outside agencies like the Outpost and such and now members are in on the game with Thousand Greens and the like. Golf has become the pay to play model everyone ever wanted.

[archie_struthers]

 


I think you can get more young members it's all in packaging. It's not as much about the culture as it was in the 60's thru 80's it's now about the fun. Golf is a great game you can play it a high level for a long time. You can play it with people of all ability levels and still have fun. You can't do that in tennis and lord knows basketball just doesn't work past 30 for too many people, as painful as that is for me personally.


The sport is evolving albeit slowly who would have thought that shirts with mick collars would ever be allowed on hallowed grounds save Munsingwear. It's too good to just go away time will show the way and the most fun places will survive and likely thrive!

[A.G._Crockett]

There isn't just one reason, or it would be fixable and not a problem.  But here are some candidates:
1. Housing prices and car prices and education costs and healthcare costs are up, while incomes have not generally increased.  In fact, the decline of the middle class is pretty well documented.
2. Kids that are involved in sports now are very often involved with travel/select teams that require huge investments of time and money by the parents; if a guy is athletically minded enough to consider a golf club, his kids might well be on that path, which makes it hard to justify a club membership.
3. If your main concern is a place to play golf, then private clubs are often a less attractive option than they used to be because too many have overbuilt the swim, tennis, and especially clubhouse facilities.  So the golfer pays a pretty outrageous monthly, plus minimums, plus frequent assessments to subsidize a bunch of stuff that he may or may not have an interest in or use for.
4. Meanwhile, the course building boom supplied a LOT of really good public or semi-private options for the guy who plays a couple of times a month.

And I don't think the problem is just millenials; I'm not a member of a private club for the first time in nearly 40 years, and I know a LOT of Boomers that have dropped memberships that they held for decades now that their kids are grown and gone. When we moved from Georgia back to NC in 2015, I looked HARD for a club that would be an affordable option, and I just couldn't justify it.  $600-$800 a month, even for a guy that plays three or four times a week is just too steep; the club that I wanted to join just did a $1.5M renovation on the clubhouse, and dues went up $100 a month in the process.  I miss the heck out of private club golf, but a "membership" for $340 a month at UNC-Finley, with no swim or tennis and a crappy grillroom works out fine.

[Dave Doxey]

Like Mr. Crockett, I was a private club member for 30+ years, before relocating for a job several years back.  I also looked long and hard for a club in my new area. Money was not a limiting factor, although I expected value for the investment. I came close to joining a new club that a few of my neighbors joined, but held off.  A good thing, as the club went bankrupt after 3 years and vanished the $50K initiation fees put up by those who joined.


Looking at clubs, I didn’t want anything except good golf.  There are a lot of good restaurants locally.  I would not use a gym, pool, or tennis courts.  I had no longer had the need for business entertaining. I never needed club membership to try to impress anyone.  Add to that the new awareness that clubs were getting in financial trouble and any initiation buy-in could be at risk and the value was just not worth it to me.


Instead, I joined two “leagues” of senior golfers who play a very informal game at various higher end public courses in the area and get reduced rates. They use very good web sites to register and communicate. If a league plays on a course that doesn’t suit me, due to conditioning, service level, or travel time, I simply do not sign up to play. I also have a regular game with a group of guys at a good local public.  As a result, I play four times a week on about 20 different local courses and enjoy the change of venue.  All courses have a 19th hole for drinks and socializing after a round.


Being retired and not having to deal with weekend crowding and pace of play helps a lot. Younger people would certainly benefit from weekend access and pace of play at a private.  I observe that cultural changes are driving the decline in private memberships.  With women working, fathers must share the weekend child rearing duties.  The rise of “helicopter parenting” means that children’s activities must be attended and paid for.  A husband leaving at 6:00 AM on Saturdays and Sundays and stumbling home at 6:00 PM are long gone.  Add to that the fact that alternative activities have become popular, such as biking, running, etc. 


I don’t agree that money or politics are driving the decline.  Read the on-line golf forums and you’ll see that, among core golfers, children and family time constraints are a much bigger hindrance to golf than money.

[Kyle Harris]

I generally don't like boards of know-nothings telling me how to spend my money in their proxy ego wars...


....oh.


....oh, dear.

[Michael Whitaker]

If you are given everything you don’t join anything.

Unless you are given a family business, I guess, that propels you way ahead of those who had to start from scratch or deep in debt.

[Mike Hendren]

Ben and Alex, great posts and thanks for your insight.  I admire millenials - I was just born 30 years too soon.

Dubs.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I recall the golf industry reports telling us America was being less clubby than the previous generation when I was a young man.  I think 2/3 or courses in 1977 when I entered the biz were public, now up to 3/4 or so.  That 2/3 was probably more than in the 1950's, etc.


So, its as much a long term trend as something the Millennials started, at least IMHO.  And, 1/3 of my children have joined a traditional private club, so my family bucks the trend!  (My son, college golfer, in the finance biz, etc., a career path closer to my father's than mine, LOL.  That said, dad would never join a club (or buy a boat) feeling you were stuck paying whether you got "enough" use out of it or not, and he was a golfer.   And, he got the pitch from our neighbors, who were members at Medinah.  He also got the McDonald's pitch from our block away neighbor, Ray Kroc, and turned that one down, too.    Another story.


Also, while I don't recall anyone mentioning it at the time, the construction of so many CCFAD's of high quality starting about 1990 was bound to have an effect on country clubs.  Yes, for those building biz relationships, staying at the club (usually closer to town and with a better clubhouse than course in many cases) made sense.  For anyone who does the math, even $100 per round is a better value than monthly dues and minimums.

[Ben Sims]

I generally don't like boards of know-nothings telling me how to spend my money in their proxy ego wars...


....oh.


....oh, dear.

This garnered a healthy guffaw Kyle. I appreciate it. Wondering why millennials aren’t joining clubs isn’t in and of itself a bad topic. I’m more than happy to share my experience joining and resigning clubs and the reasons associated.


But ignoring the elephant in the room—stagnating wages relative to housing, transportation, and inflation—is not how this discussion should be going. Yeah us millennials can all identify our personal reasons. But what’s the overarching reason? Money.

[Kalen Braley]

I generally don't like boards of know-nothings telling me how to spend my money in their proxy ego wars...


....oh.


....oh, dear.

But ignoring the elephant in the room—stagnating wages relative to housing, transportation, and inflation—is really what we need to be talking about at large. Yeah us millennials can all identify our personal reasons. But what’s the overarching reason? Money.

Amen to this one Ben, its really quite simple.  Millenials have a much smaller piece of the pie, than the generations did before it at the same age and are carrying far far more debt.

P.S.  Millennials didn't invent trolling, us Gen X'ers did when the internet blew up and you all were still in diapers. 

[Bernie Bell]

Not as many play golf.  If they don't want to go the golf course, no one is going to stop them (per Yogi).
Among those that like golf, it's too expensive for all but a shrinking percentage.
And in gross generalizations --
-They like to dis-aggregate.  In my area, there are quite a few decent privately-owned public golf courses that offer monthly subscriptions ($220-300/month) for unlimited play.  And other discounted options for "flex" deals in a 10-pack, etc.  That's at least 50% cheaper than all, and 75% cheaper than most, CCs in the area, even before considering initiation.
-They have a sharper eye than most boomers for evaluating whether particular "elite" institutions, including status country clubs (but sadly excluding colleges), are really intrinsically magnificent or praiseworthy, or flourish largely due to snobbery. 
-I don't think as a whole they're big joiners of anything - churches, unions, non-mandatory professional associations.
-Influence of social marketing and the preference for the "epic" experience that Instagrams well.
-Don't like the vetting process of the status clubs.

[John Emerson]

I generally don't like boards of know-nothings telling me how to spend my money in their proxy ego wars...


....oh.


....oh, dear.

This garnered a healthy guffaw Kyle. I appreciate it. Wondering why millennials aren’t joining clubs isn’t in and of itself a bad topic. I’m more than happy to share my experience joining and resigning clubs and the reasons associated.


But ignoring the elephant in the room—stagnating wages relative to housing, transportation, and inflation—is not how this discussion should be going. Yeah us millennials can all identify our personal reasons. But what’s the overarching reason? Money.

This.  Wages have slacked off compared to cost of living and inflation, and this in turn creates less disposable income for things like golf.

[Matt_Cohn]

As an elder millennial, I’d first like to point out that we’ll trade a couple of draft picks for Kavanaugh. We invented internet trolling and yet he, a boomer, has perfected it here in this thread.


As for why we don’t join golf clubs? Beats me. I’ve joined three and quit for different reasons each time. What I do know is that speaking generally about the millennial generation is a sure fire way to miss the boat completely. It seems that with a generation as wide as is normally accepted for millennials, birth years early 80’s to late 90’s, you’re bound to miss something by stereotyping that large of a demographic.


Me personally, gravitating away from golf and losing the desire to join a club was preceded by kids and continues  as my kids age and time becomes limited. I can own the Cypress Point of mountain bikes for little more than the initiation fee of a Doak 4. What’s more, I stay in better shape by riding a bike or going to a good gym. And when the snow falls, it’s not like I was playing golf anyway. Skiing then becomes the major focus of the family during leisure time for our family.


All that to say this. Golf clubs are expensive. They take up a lot of time. They limit discretionary income to a limited activity. They have a whole mess of people that folks in my generation don’t always like to be around. The food generally isn’t as good or inventive as the food truck lot down the road. Like Tom said, it’s just easier not to join one.


By the way, do I get participation trophy for posting in this thread?

Late Post of the Year candidate.

[John Kirk]

Late Post of the Year candidate.

+1.

[John Kavanaugh]

If you are given everything you don’t join anything.

Unless you are given a family business, I guess, that propels you way ahead of those who had to start from scratch or deep in debt.

Nailed it!!! It may seem lame to young people today to follow in their Father's footsteps. 4th generation bitches...

[Ronald Montesano]

Four out of five comments by Kavanaugh are absolutely vindictive, envious and worthless in this thread (if you're wondering, it's comment #4 that I consider appropriate.)


Moving on, being a teacher and having a number of these young'uns in my social media circles, if I were to start a fresh CC in Buffalo (feel free to concur, based on where you live) this is what I would include:


A golf course;
craft beer;
craft spirits;
a chill grill room, away from the clubhouse, with nice views;
a rumpus room, for ax throwing and other madness;


If you want to see the best club for the millenials, despite it being uber-expensive (don't hate on me JW) go to The Bridge in Bridgehampton, NY. The anti-booj CC. I can't speak for diversity of membership, but that place has been so chill-ax since I saw it for the first and only time, in 2013.

[Guy Nicholson]

      A lot of it’s covered above. I'm a young Xer, so a certain amount of it applies to my cohort and older millennials I know. Here's how I see it:

• Country clubs never really were for young people. And as mentioned above, young people have less money and more debt than ever.
• It’s not just millennials – every generation has fewer members than the current country club set. Decline was and remains inevitable.
• Right or wrong, country club suggests all-white and exclusionary to some, and those words are anathema to millennials.
• Country clubs tend to be in the suburbs. More than previous generations, millennials like to live downtown. Here in Toronto, many people that age don't own cars, or at least don't build their lives around them. That lifestyle is tough to square  with regular trips to a suburban club.
• There are plenty of high-end public options for experiencing high-end golf design. The ubiquitiousness of air travel has made them more accessible as one-off experiences.
• Millennial men are more likely than previous generations to be deeply involved in raising their children. Today’s dads don’t need to go looking to fill their weekends.
• Millennials have a lot of more entertainment and leisure options.

[corey miller]

I am not sure where Ian Mackenzie lives but I am not sure I agree with the White Republican thing when many of the "great" clubs are in Blue states and overwhelmingly blue metro areas. 


Using population growth as some sort of measure of "health of club industry" is also way off for a variety of reasons especially in light of the recent post by Jeff about the new clubs on the East End of Long Island...Do we really think that is a function of population growth or growth of the game?

Just in the small area of eastern Long Island twin forksThe BridgeEast HamptonAtlanticSebonackFriars HeadLong Island NationalThe Vineyards
Laurel Links