1. The platonic way is to try to delve in to what the essence of golfness and clubness are and try to hash out what that is.
2. The deductive way is basically to look at what legally constitutes a club organized by golf, and just point to that.
3. The analytic way is to just point at a bunch of golf clubs and say it's something like those things.
I will admit that I actually lean toward Ben in my thoughts on this thread. It has been incredibly frustrating, which is why I tried to preempt any comment like this by laying out the general concepts in philosophy of language, which is what studied in graduate school.
I think the reason why this conception can be so frustrating has a lot to do with how language works. A prescriptive framework for language means that we, effectively, defer to an authority. This position is arguably instinctual, but linguists have pretty much abandoned this position as it is simply very bad at reflecting how language works. A descriptive framework better describes language, but this means that we're all kind of fighting for our preferred system.
In this way, folks that are arguing the nuances between a "country club" and a "golf club" are having a very different conversation from everyone else. They are having a conversation that effectively makes sense, but can seem incredibly misguided or even nonsensical to anyone who sees the distinction as a kind of regional dialect at best. I think a big part of why this can be pretty aggravating is that the distinction is deeply culturally coded, even if I can perfectly see the distinctions being made.
The problem here is that the type of "golf club" being discussed, is very obviously a subtype of "golf club" that has (1) a course or some special access to a course, (2) some kind of limited membership, (3) does not have access to attributes that more general clubs have. This is all well and good in a
very American private club system, but the problem is that the language being use here for "golf club" is just
way too broad to clearly communicate that we are talking about a niche submeaning.
For example, is some local eclub that has members that play together a "golf club"? To the vast majority of native English speakers, it very obviously is. Is a country club that focuses on golf a "golf club"? To the vast majority of native English speakers, the term "golf club" very obviously applies, even if it's not the very best term to the niche audience of golf enthusiasts like us. Here, it's important to remember
that this niche kind of language isn't plain language, it's technical language, it's
jargon. When we take an extremely commonly used term like "golf club" and talking about a technical use, we are effectively creating a homonym. Which is why the phase, "well there are golf clubs, and then there are
golf clubs" makes sense.
So, and again I apologize for being so verbose. I want y'all to feel free to discuss these nuances till the cows come home. The difference between a "country club" and a "golf club" is a sensible distinction in a narrow sense, but please
please, I'm begging you, don't conflate the term "golf club" that exists in opposition to "country club" with the term "golf club" that just means "club who's purpose is organizing the playing of golf," which are two very distinct terms.