More about club culture

A prominent consultant I know says that he can tell in advance if the membership at a private club is going to present problems about the maintenance program.

“If I see more than three yellow sports cars in the parking lot,” he says, “I know they’re going to be overly demanding and unreasonable. The cars are a giveaway that they have more money than common sense and think anything is possible.”

My own parking lot read is less nuanced than that. If I see what amounts to a split between expensive cars and budget models, I know the club is paralyzed on decision-making because half the membership is willing to spend and the other half can’t afford the cost. The club — and the golf course — ends up languishing in slow, steady decline.

It’s called “club culture.” That means the kind of place it is and what animates the majority of those who use the facility. Whatever that culture is, it infuses every cubic foot of the place and is a hint to the quality of decision-making, the professional acumen of the management, the sense of member entitlement and the self-esteem (or lack thereof) by the staff.

The surest sign of a vibrant club culture is not the condition of the golf course; it’s staff morale. If longevity is a hallmark of employment, that is usually because the club attends to the well-being and sense of professional pride among those who labor there. Everyone benefits in the process: employees, because they feel respected, and the club, because members continue to get top-notch service without having to go out each season and search for new employees. It’s more efficient and less expensive to keep paying a longtime employee than to have to recruit and train a new one.

Contrast that to a club where membership is free to express their boorish expectations to service people and excessive behavior goes unpunished by a benighted board. Equally insidious is the club so dominated in course management and tournament setup that mid- and high handicappers feel helpless to speak up, are ignored or are laughed at when they do, and end up suffering their golf games in quiet neglect, as if they were not full golf citizens with rights.

And then there is the club where life is focused entirely on the “clubhouse experience,” whether that means six days a week of valet parking with car detailing, or buffet lunches so lavish that there’s more food on the table at the end of service than at the beginning. All too often, that kind of mentality ends up encouraging some genius on the house committee to plan a $3 million expansion of the bar overlooking the putting green rather than letting the club fix bunkers that have not been upgraded in 30 years.

That’s the mind of a club where the superintendent would rather take lunch in his office than wander into the clubhouse, unprotected and open to verbal assault by a member who just read an Instagram post about a new turfgrass. It’s also the kind of club where the golf pro is surreptitiously sniping at the greenkeeper and the general manager is no more than an aspiring sommelier.

Dysfunction knows many guises. Luckily, so does a healthy club culture. Like the facility where the general manager, superintendent and PGA professional meet weekly to discuss the entirety of club matters. And the green chairman meets regularly with the superintendent in the maintenance area. For their part, greenkeepers ought to be welcome occasionally to address the board directly, and they should also be made welcome to take lunch in the clubhouse as well as to cultivate relations with the members by playing golf with them.

I’ve seen too many clubs run like extended family fiefdoms, or like little frat houses on the prairie. It takes a dedicated act of will for senior management to address the nature of club culture and, where necessary, to restructure it. Like the club where five solo carts in a group is de rigueur because a loophole in the HOA rules allows for personal transport to run unabated. Or the club that simply assumes that all golfers are riding rather than asking at the bag drop what your preference is.

Sometimes the gains are small but symbolic. Like the club that confronts its members’ historic fascination with lush green grass by infiltrating some large areas of native fescue and bluestem in out-of-play areas. Or the club without caddies that bans pull carts as “unseemly” while deeming motorized golf carts as elegant and more appropriate.

The easy part of this is identifying a club’s culture. The hard work comes in trying to change it. Quality leadership knows the difference. The ability to make that change is what makes the golf pro, the GM and the superintendent truly valuable.