Obama Failure Thread Part VI

Exactly. You can play the game in a lot of places, but we all know that the sport combined with the expensive club atmosphere is deliberately exclusive. That's worth mentioning as a negative, even if they have the right to exclude.

 

By that definition, anything expensive is deliberately exclusive. I'm not in agreement.

 

Stanger's right in saying the clubs want to make money and I'm not denying that. But it's also true to say part of the reason is to make the club more 'exclusisve', AKA keep the riff-raff out.

What was it Harpo Marx said? He wouldn't to be a member of any club that would have him as a member

In any event what's the reason for having 'invitation only'? If all you wanted was to make money, you'd just put the prices up, wouldn't you?

 

Nobody joins our private club to play better golf. It's a social thing, to be with other toffs. I knew a guy who was a member. Third generation inherited money, although also a smart guy who got a top-of-the-line MBA. Like a nonMormon Mitt. He is also on the Board of Directors for a company, go figure.

Anyway those are the people that golf clubs serve. I deal with those people quite a bit in work and I live near some of them, so I know them quite well. They're alright. But I have no wish to be one of them, either.

 

Really!

But, tell me, what is your position on where bears shit and whether the pope is, or is not, catholic?

Look, nobody is saying that the price for things are dictated solely by societal pressures. Some things just ARE more expensive... but that's a totally different matter to whether some things are priced to maintain an air of exclusivity so they don't become connected with 'the wrong sort'.

IOW the matter is complex and can't be summed up in a simplistic phrase or aphorism.

 

Yeah, my wording was off. Max got it right.

 

I don't think it's complex at all. We all know why people join expensive golf clubs. Networking opportunities, exclusivity, being around other people like them. It's a personality match too. Not many PhDs or software engineers are club members. It's a businessman/sales/deal-making culture.

The golf is the excuse -- the real attraction is the club aspect of the golf club.

 

I was responding to the statement about the pricing of things in general, particularly things OTHER than golf.... Stangers' post I quoted, IOW.

 

$50 a round? Shit, that's extravagant. Public courses vastly outnumber private up here, AND they don't burn out in the summer - lovely and green the whole season long.

There has been a disturbing trend where courses are selling to housing developers or mega-church builders, but there are still lots of options for the common man to play.

 

Not so fast!! Lemme see your photo ID.

Hah! I thought so!

 

I'm two houses away from this par 3/4 beauty, which costs $700 for a couple for unlimited play during the year, or $15 to $25 per individual round.

 

That's actually quite reasonable.

Would I be right in thinking the proportion of corporate bigwigs using that is significantly lower than some other courses in the area?

 

Yes of course. This course is for retirees, high school kids, families, and college kids sneaking beers inside their golf bags.

There are a lot of reasonably priced courses in the States, we have a lot of land after all. And tennis courts too ... probably 15 free public courts within a 1o minute drive of me. Tennis is not a hoity toity sport here.

 

Well, that's what struck me... the one thing you HAVE got is land.

Once a course is built the main costs would presumably be labour and costs for mowing and suchlike.

The main thing that strikes me from a business point of view is that, if a course such as that can be maintained with charges of the order you state, then so can another.

 

Uh, no.

 

As someone that has been a member of a country club, you are wrong.

 

I worked at one. There is some of that, especially when the owner had ties to the Youngstown and Canton mob scenes. But for the most part, when I was working at the one I worked at, there were a lot of retirees and young doctor/lawyer types with more than a few blue-collar guys with successful businesses.

 

Here in CBus, there are literally dozens of private golf clubs. There are also a few very exclusive, private clubs, the types that you need a personal invitation to join, like Muirfield Village and Double Eagle. I was a member growing up at Muirfield Village Country Club and worked for a few summers in college at Wedgewood CC. Anyone with the $$ to join was invited because they weren't then and aren't now doing all that great financially. There is another local club that had sort of a tiered membership system that is going under after this year, Riveria. It was built by the Italian American Mens Club and if you wanted preferential treatment you better be Italian. Us Germans could join and pay dues but couldn't get the good tee times.

There was another private club, this time the membership was Jewish, that went under twice. First time they lost members due to the city of Columbus building rent-controlled housing on a few of the fairways on the back nine. They sold it to the city for $2 million and the city still runs it as a muni. They bought land further out, built another club and course and went bankrupt within 10 years. That was sold and is being run, successfully, as a public course. Maybe if they had let in more non-Jews it could have survived.

What I can tell you is that even clubs that have a pretty prestigious name in the golfing community, like Scioto CC, where Jack Nickulas learned the game, memberships are available to anyone willing to pony up a couple of hundred a month in dues. Equity memberships are almost unheard of anymore. The exclusivity some of you are pointing at is simply not happening.

 

Uh, yes.

In the context I was discussing, (the differences in price between municipal/'family' courses and the networking/management/CEO ones that John mentioned), the other costs, (to do with the clubhouse, functions, etc. etc.), can't be apportioned to the golf course specifically because they're a function of the other elements of the business and would exist even if NOBODY ever played golf or if the course even existed. Ergo, the continuing costs connected to the running and upkeep of the course should be connected to the course.

 

Maybe about every other club in the U.S., but not about my town's club. Perhaps we are the exception, that could be.

 

Water, fertilizer, seed, equipment upkeep, gasoline, carts, electricity to charge carts/gasoline for carts, cart maintenance...

 

Dynamite for combating gophers?

 

ESPECIALLY that.

 

Well that's 'labour and costs for mowing and suchlike' as I said, yer twit. DO keep up, there's a good fella.

IOW, the costs associated purely with the course probably aren't that great. The majority of the costs of running a modern private golf club probably relate to the OTHER functions the club does and, if you remove the course entirely and replaced it with another pursuit, (or nothing at all, as happened in the old 'gentleman's clubs' popular in London and elsewhere), the club could still function in much the same way.

The point at issue is whether golf is inherently that expensive and my contention is that, at it's heart, it needn't be.

 

Not in Virginia - we don't want to pay taxes for anything.