I was a member for about 20 years at a private country club in a very small and not too very affluent town in Upstate NY. There was a broad spectrum of wealth. Some old money, and some folks who could barely afford to belong.
There was a push among the wealthy to make it more posh, always resisted by those that could barely afford it as it was. They had a dress code. They had some goofy rules that they thought made it look classier, like you could carry your bag, but you couldn't pull it along on a wheeled cart.
Eventually I just decided I wasn't playing enough to justify the cost, especially since up there we couldn't even play 6 or 7 months of the year, so I quit and started playing at the local municipal course, which was actually a very nice Donald Ross design. They had a dress code which was basically "wear clothes".
One night I was walking the course, pulling my wheeled cart, and playing with a guy I just hooked up with who had been playing the course since he was a wee lad. He told me that when he was a kid the dress code on a hot day was "keep your shirt on while playing the first hole, put back on on the 9th hole and 10th holes, and put it back on while playing the 18th".
I played there for almost 20 years before leaving the area.
At the private club people had their groups, and were pretty fussy about who they played with. At the municipal course people were friendly, and I played with a lot of different people. Want to guess where I had more fun?
|