“The Death of The Country Club” made no mention, of course, of how many properties, including some that are 100-plus years old, continue to find fresh ways to reassert their relevance and reenergize both their memberships and their staffs.
“They’re baaa-aaack,” as the little girl said in Poltergeist II: The Other Side. While she was talking about the ghosts that had once again returned to do harm to her family, my warning is prompted by seeing new evidence that the doomsayers who like to keep coming back to preside over our demise have once again reared their ugly heads, writing articles with ghoulish themes like “The Death of the Country Club” and “The Zombie Golf Courses Are Coming.”
Those of us who live in the industry every day know that these reports of our death are greatly exaggerated, especially when you can point to the inspiring stories of how 100-plus-year-old properties like the Field Club of Omaha and The Country Club in Brookline, Mass. continue to find fresh ways to reassert their relevance and reenergize both their memberships and their staffs.
Still, when these articles appear, they get sent to me by managers who are understandably concerned over how they might affect not only their clubs’ ability to attract new members and management talent, but also have a potentially negative impact on their relationships with suppliers, lenders and communities.
The good news is, should any of that prove to be an issue, it’s never very hard to find counter-arguments to what’s been written. That is certainly the case with “The Death of the Country Club,” published in City Journal, which touts itself as “the nation’s premier urban-policy magazine” (that alone was a tip-off that the content was likely to stray into territory beyond the publication’s scope of expertise).
Still, the author didn’t hesitate to plunge in with a number of unsubstantiated (and thoroughly debatable) declarations: A changing culture has eroded the country club’s societal influence. Golf and tennis have lost popularity. Declining marriage and fertility rates mean fewer families joining. Young professionals balk at paying dues. A yearning for broader community makes the clubhouse’s exclusivity unappealing. Increasingly, the country club is a refuge for retirees.
After then going through a lot of general historical data and even reviewing how country clubs had been portrayed through the years in American literature (zzzzz…), the author eventually got around to citing some examples of clubs (none of them particularly prominent or successful) that had closed or were being repurposed, to make his case for why a sheet should be pulled over the industry.
But there was no mention, of course, of the boom that has been seen in clubhouse design and renovation projects, and how those have turned quiet and musty, enclosed dining rooms that used to require jackets into lively and loud casual venues that are filled to capacity, not only inside but also with people spilling outside their doors onto new patios as well. Or of all the new youth-oriented activity that can now be seen around revamped club pools and other parts of the property, or how popular new activities like pickleball are being enjoyed by players of all ages. Or even of how golf and tennis are also getting shots in the arm through new approaches that are proving to be successful in reversing those games’ “lost popularity.”
No, because mentioning any of that probably would have meant having to reword the headline, and that in turn would have meant not giving anyone any reason to check out the story. Which turned out to be pretty much the case, anyway. As one of the people who sent me the article said in summing it up: “This is a semi-interesting read…nothing earth-shattering, as we all know. We just hear it more often.”
And no doubt will continue to.
Joe Barks
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