Is This The Time To Join A Private Club?

As the social and economic hurdles to membership at more prestigious clubs, such as nearby Saucon Valley Country Club, began to recede, Jewish clubs such as Berkleigh found less purpose and fewer members. The club's days were numbered.

Lerner, who lives in the Orlando area, visited the club in July 2007. "We jokingly billed our get-together as The Finale," he says. "In your mind you say it, but you don't believe it's going to happen. You hold out hope."

Three months later, Berkleigh was shuttered and sold to a local cement company. Everything in the clubhouse, from sofas to deep fryers, was auctioned off. The club-championship plaque, with the gilded names of proud victors past, now hangs not in a chatter-filled grillroom or a grand dining room, but in Adam Leifer's cellar. In April, Berkleigh Golf Club reopened as a public course with a $60 green fee that includes a cart.

Regardless of location, virtually all golf facilities--private and public--are confronting a common economic problem: too many golf courses. Some point a finger at the National Golf Foundation, the clearinghouse for golf-industry research and consulting services. The NGF got developers' attention in the late 1980s and early '90s by suggesting that, based upon participation rates that were climbing 3 to 4 percent a year and assumptions that aging baby boomers would soon retire--or at the very least work fewer hours--the golf-course market could absorb roughly one new course a day from 1988-'98. Partly as a result of that projection and partly as a result of anemic due diligence by developers and lenders, the American golf market went from 104 golf-course openings (public and private) in 1983 to 358 openings in 1993.

Today, NGF chief executive Joe Beditz acknowledges the golf-course glut but says that course developers heard from the NGF only what they wanted to hear.

"We said in 1988, that given the growth rates and participation rates we were seeing, golf could support it," Beditz says of the course-a-day plan. "We also said that the building should be across all categories, ranging from the low end to the high end. Of course, everybody not only built high-end, but they built in the same markets."

By 1999, the golf-course market began to turtle. As it turned out, golfers entering their mid-50s were working more hours and working later into their lives than originally expected. The supply of golf courses was outpacing demand, creating what amounts to a national golf bazaar. Jim Cook, chairman of the past-presidents committee of the Rochester (N.Y.) District Golf Association, sums up the situation succinctly: "There are too many golf courses and not enough players. We have so many really good golf courses that are virtually giving away their golf."

If you can forget for a moment the financial troubles this has caused countless facilities, and the fact that the course where you play might not be there in two or three years, the facilities' pain is the shopping golfer's gain. In New Hampshire, private clubs have taken to the state golf association's website (nhgolf.com) to troll for private-club members. In the East Bay region of San Francisco, a 40-year-old golfer who has been club shopping says eight private clubs within a 25-mile radius are aggressively dealing for his business.

Emerald Dunes Golf Club in West Palm Beach is competing in one of the most cutthroat geographic markets in the game. With an initiation fee of $150,000 and 150 members short of its goal, the club has established a "junior membership" that requires an initial payment of $35,000 and the signing of a five-year note at 5 percent for the balance. Recognizing the pressures on the club market is Frank Chirkinian, the former CBS Sports executive who led a purchase of the club in 2005. "You've got to be creative," says Chirkinian. "You can't just say, 'This is the price.' That's not going to work anymore."