Last month, Uniontown Country Club opened its dining room to the public for the first time -- a change that has blurred the social hierarchy in this mountain town south of Pittsburgh. The economic crisis and shifting demographics have left Uniontown, population 13,000, without enough wealthy residents to sustain a private club, so now UCC caters to the everymen it was created to exclude. Instead of handpicking its members from a waiting list, UCC advertises in the local paper, has relaxed its dress code and features a menu designed for what the new chef calls "budget-conscious eating." Out: the filet mignon for $30. In: super nachos for $7.95.
"We've gone from chichi to Chi-Chi's," one member says.
The same shift is affecting country clubs everywhere, including in the Washington region, where some have cut initiation fees, others have eliminated them and a private Ashburn club opened to the public just last week. The National Golf Foundation has identified more than 500 clubs at serious risk of closing, and a recent survey of club managers showed that twice as many members resigned during the past 12 months than during a typical year.
In western Pennsylvania alone, six clubs have staved off bankruptcy recently by opening at least partially to the public. Most of them share a plight similar to that in Uniontown, where a declining population and the recession have combined to make recruiting new members nearly impossible.
That's to be expected in this economy. As a longtime golf course employee, my first concern is the jobs lost as these clubs close or cut back. 500 clubs at risk means several thousand jobs at risk. But if Ezra or the Post have any concern about that they aren't voicing it. Continuing:
Consistency is what has drawn the Clusses to the club every Wednesday for the past 50 years, and they hold fast to their routines. They sip white wine in their home's sunroom before dinner and then drive two miles uptown to UCC. They enter through double doors into a sprawling front room adorned with a brick fireplace, a dusty grand piano and three bouquets of fake flowers. Creaky hardwood floors announce their arrival, and two staff members walk out to greet them.
"Hello, Mr. Cluss."
"Hello, Mrs. Cluss."
Every corner of the UCC building is filled with Cluss family memories, because the couple have come here at least once each week since Charles took over his father's lumber company and bought a membership in 1953. Outside is the golf course where Charles spent his weekends and the pool where Mimi relaxed under a pink umbrella, the benefits of exclusivity for which the Clusses paid more than $2,500 a year.Whoa! What was that? $2,500 per year? I thought this was about an exclusive club for the wealthy? What kind of garbage is the Post peddling here? $2,500 per year is an affordable alternative to public golf. Taking a guess here, I'll surmise that the majority of the members at Union Country Club are middle class golfers, people who play a lot of golf and actually save money by paying a little over $200 per month for a family membership.
According to the National Golf Foundation, at the end of 2007 there were 4415 private golf courses in the US. I'd guess there's several thousand more which blend membership and public play, as UCC is now doing. That means hundreds of thousands of Americans have golf course memberships - not a terribly exclusive number. The greens fee at an average public course (again according to the NGF) is $40. If the couple in the the Post story play once a week they save about $1600 a year by joining that country club. That's a good deal, and a price that's likely to attract people who are avid golfers and not terribly interrested in exclusivity.
But large numbers of middle class Americans owning private golf club memberships wouldn't fit the Post's narrative, would it?
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