Talking your way on: the secret to playing top private courses when you're not a member? Sometimes all you have to do is ask

Golf Digest, August, 2004 by Peter Finch

YOU'RE ON THE ROAD AGAIN AND--hey, how about this?--you've got an afternoon to spare before catching that evening flight home. Unfortunately your golf options are limited. You can head out to the local muny, Scruffy Hills Golf Club, where a ball landing on a weed qualifies as a good lie. Perhaps you'd rather take your chances at the supposedly upscale daily fee, The Links at Legend Hollow, where $200 buys you a cartpath-only five-hour round through a hideous housing development.

Or you can do like Ernie Moreno and play one of the world's most celebrated private courses, Oakland Hills Country Club, site of six U.S. Opens and the upcoming Ryder Cup Matches.

Moreno isn't a member of Oakland Hills. He's not even friends with any members. Yet the last time he visited Michigan, he and his brother-in-law got to play the course, and they had a blast. "It was magnificent," says Moreno, owner of a San Jose, Calif., commercial-building maintenance business.

What was Moreno's secret? He asked.

It's true that the world's top private golf clubs can be intimidating, what with the towering brick walls and guard shacks and signs warning, "Private: Trespassers Will Be Shot." But the fact is, nonmembers get on these courses all the time, and often all it takes is a simple request: "May I?"

This isn't something everyone in the golf business is eager to talk about. Some of the people we contacted for this article confirmed that it goes on but didn't want their club's name mentioned, for fear of being overrun with requests from nonmembers. Yet we were able to come up with advice that will increase your chances of getting on those courses you've always wanted to play. We know it works--at least some of the time--because we tested it.

Befriend a member

The easiest way to play an exclusive course is to ask a member. Assuming he or she doesn't mind doing you a favor, you'll get on. We know what you're thinking: "I don't know anyone who's a member." Don't be so sure. That old line about everyone having "6 degrees of separation" from anyone else in the United States is true. To prove it, we asked Peter Daigle--a Connecticut insurance agent who has no obvious ties to The Country Club in Brookline, Mass.--to see if he could get onto the storied U.S. Open and Ryder Cup site. No problem. All it took was one business meeting and two follow-up phone calls before Daigle found 3 easy degrees of separation between himself and a member. Like that, he had made his connection and an invitation was on its way.

It's easier still at clubs that allow "unaccompanied guests." In those cases, a member just has to make a call for you--much easier than having him give up half a day to play with someone he doesn't know. Just be prepared to pay up, because "unaccompanied" fees are usually much higher.

The club ties that bind

The people in a position to say "yes" to your request--golf pros and general managers, mainly--agree that your chances of getting on are best if you belong to a club. This is because many clubs have reciprocal agreements with other clubs: You let me play your course and I'll let you play mine.

Of the 4,300 private golf clubs in the U.S., about 1,600 of them openly welcome reciprocal play, says Pete Baumann, who runs a Palm Springs company called Reciprocal Golf. For $350 a year, Baumann will act as a matchmaker between you and those courses. "We do the same thing a member's head pro does," Baumann explains. "We call the course you want to play and set it all up for you. The difference is that we're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so the pros don't spend all day on phone tag while you wonder whether you'll be able to play."

Steven Polevoy, a retired bed-frame manufacturer from New Jersey, has used Reciprocal Golf several times during the past year. He hoped to play Seminole Golf Club--ranked 14th on Golf Digest's list of America's 100 Greatest Courses--but Reciprocal Golf couldn't arrange it. Still, it recently got him on the Mayacoo Lakes Country Club in West Palm Beach and the TPC at Eagle Trace in Coral Springs, Fla. "It wouldn't have dawned on me that I could play these courses," Polevoy says.

Even if the club you want to visit has no formal arrangement with your club, the pro at your place often will have connections. Working these relationships is how Moreno ended up at Oakland Hills. Don't count out your club's general manager or its superintendent, either. Yes, the superintendent. Just like teaching pros, supers belong to a small and tightknit community; they'll often do just about anything to help each other out, including doing favors for members.

Most agree that the more status your home club has, the better chance you'll have of getting on the most exclusive courses. Another plus: having a pro who's known and well-regarded within the industry. "If your pro is high up in your [PGA of America] section or even if he's known as a really good player, that can have some halo effect for you," says Mike Hughes, executive director of the National Golf Course Owners Association