Red and a lot of other guys at the club take me back to those days with the Mercury and the map. They love golf, can't get enough of it, but know it's not all about them. They make a point of learning the club's history, the course's evolution, the older members who've shaped the place. They resist change for its own sake but happily dispense with handed-down silliness. They own the place.
I'm not suggesting that you can't meet such guys at a public course. Of course you can. But you can't meet Red and his kids and wife, Chris, have your son meet his sons and play a few holes together or, God forbid, hang out by the pool.
Of all the countless PowerPoints I've endured over the years on why people like/don't like, take up/don't take up, stay with/abandon the game of golf, one stands out. A researcher named Madelyn Hochstein gave five reasons all of us have less time for golf -- and anything else. Three I've forgotten, but these two stick:
1. We spend an enormous amount of time responding to and staying current on technology meant to save us time.
2. We have ceded our recreation time to our kids.
On first pass, belonging to a private club would seem to live on the wrong side of both those tracks. But for me the club is the escape from that technology -- from using it, from keeping up on it, from letting it run my life. The Board says no gadgets on the golf course. Long live the Board.
‘You know the old joke about clubs. The first guy says, 'Do you belong here?' and the second replies, 'No, but I'm a member.' Don't believe it. Belonging is a big deal.’
And where else can you and your kids, on a sunny weekend afternoon at 5 o'clock, decide on the spur of the moment to play five or six or seven holes and then have dinner? "I'm sorry, sir," I can remember a local public-course operator telling me, "we don't allow carts out after 5 because they won't be in before 7, and the staff gets off at 6:30." Oh, and they have no nine-hole fee on weekends. But at the club you can run into Roger and Ruth Ann, your husband-wife partners, and play the last two holes with them, and if you catch up to Murph and find out how his two boys at Leadbetter are doing, that's even sweeter.
If this sounds way too perfect, don't worry. Play with (I'll call him) Chad, and while he's shooting 69 he'll give you a talk show on slow play, slow greens, "inappropriate" fescue, or the "odd" color of shingles we've chosen for the clubhouse roof. One of the pitfalls of a club is that you might be sucked into the management and maintenance of a second household -- or worse, a discussion of how it ought to be done. Avoid this. But don't pass up a chance to volunteer for the tournament committee when your club hosts one. Giving back is part of being a member, and you'll never meet so many people you wished you'd met earlier.
My wife, Julie, just walked by and asked me what I was writing. When I told her, she said: "Tell them it's about family," which is where I was meandering when I was interrupted.
It's about family: My old family, my new family -- Matt and Jules -- and all those other families we've adopted over the years, swapping stories in white rockers on the clubhouse porch.
Simply put, it's sharing the game you live for with people you live for. Good clubs can make that happen.
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