The Golf 100: The Problem With American Golf

Look to the original home of golf for a better way.

Golf Magazine just released its newest version of “The Top 100 Courses in the U.S.” for 2022-23, and it’s full of the names of so many legendary courses - Pine Valley, Cypress Point, Augusta National, NGLA, Fishers Island, and so forth.

Sprinkled in there are a few amazing public courses - all of the ones at Bandon Dunes, Pebble Beach, Kiawah Island and a handful of others.

I’m not going to go through and count, but I would guess charitably that 80 of the top 100 courses on the list are private. And many of them are QUITE private - that is, there’s almost no way on without knowing the right person and getting super lucky. Which is to say, almost everyone reading this article won’t have a chance to play maybe 80% of the courses listed. And for the majority of people who belong to those clubs, this is a feature, not a bug.

Augusta National isn’t just impossible to play, it’s almost impossible to even go watch The Masters in person!

This is just a way of life here in the states, but it’s so pervasive - and it’s a reason there are many people who really dislike golf and have never played it. Golf courses are built here to keep people OUT, and there’s no denying that there’s a huge history of racist, prejudicial and sexist clubs out there whose clubs were designed solely to create a men-only, white-only, Christian-only place for the members to “be themselves.” It’s gross. While most (but not all) clubs have opened up membership to a more diverse population, there are still so, so many private clubs that keep the gates locked to the masses.

Full disclosure - I belong to one! However, it’s very progressive and if anyone is considering joining, it’s easy to get a preview round, etc. The reason I belong is worth a separate post - largely, golf has become very popular and there are only two public golf courses near me, which are now so busy and expensive, that joining this course actually made sense. But transparency is important, so there you go.

If you want to gaze at Fishers Island from afar - since you’re unlikely to play it - you’ll have to do it by boat or air.

If you go to Scotland, England or Ireland, a truly private golf course is almost impossible to find. Even a place like Muirfield, the most openly stuffy club we know across the pond, is open a few days a week to the public. Public access is integral to their understanding of golf - St. Andrews, the literal home of golf, is closed on Sundays and used as a public park!

Here’s another benefit - I’m going on a massive trip to Ireland next summer, and playing some of the toniest clubs the country has to offer. The greens fees my friends and I will pay are roughly half what a member pays to belong there for a YEAR. We subsidize local golfers. And that’s a good thing!

To the members of Ballybunion, you’re welcome in advance. And thank you for letting us play.

Sure, in a perfect world, courses like Augusta National and the San Francisco Golf Club would not only be open like this but even cheaper to expand that accessibility to everyone. There are some great programs out there to help get less privileged folks, especially children, into the game. Youth On Course is one such group as well as the PGA’s own The First Tee. But of course, these are solutions to a problem of our own making. If more courses were publicly accessible, including more municipal courses being well funded, golf would for sure be more popular and accordingly more diverse.

In fairness, Golf Magazine also publishes a list of “The Top 100 Golf Courses You Can Play” which … kind of says it all. (A fair amount of these are truly public, others are parts of resorts you need to stay at in order to play, but there are ways to get onto them all, even if the cost can be fairly prohibitive.)

All of this is to say: I wish golf was more accessible, and I wish we didn’t celebrate it’s exclusivity in ways like this article.