The waiting list: think your club is ready to grant you full golf membership? Think again

Golf Digest, Sept, 2002 by Marcia Chambers

Back in May 1995, Tom and Mary Ann Soltys were delighted when the old-line Wellesley Country Club in Massachusetts notified them that they had been accepted as members. A member of the admission committee told them they would be provided with full golf privileges in two to three years. After the meeting, the Soltyses received confirmation from Owen Dugan, the chair of Wellesley's admissions committee, whose letter said in part: "For people joining now, there is no waiting for tennis or pool privileges. For golf, there is a two- to three-year wait."

The Soltyses paid a nonrefundable initiation fee of $10,000, plus $7,000 to obtain a certificate of ownership, redeemable at the current price upon leaving the club. They also paid dues that averaged about $2,400 a year, eventually forking over almost $30,000 to the club.

What the Soltyses did not know was that between 1991 and 1995, the year they joined, the club had a total of 221 newly admitted members on the golf waiting list. Nor did Tom know he was number 162 in the queue. Or that it would take a year for him to move up a mere 12 spots. Others had it worse--in 1996, a couple came in at 277 and 278 on the waiting list.

Mary Ann Soltys raised the issue in 1996 with Pat Palmer, then a board member and now president of the club. Three years later, "When we challenged these actions," the Soltyses say, "the board's response was to subject us to retaliatory expulsion proceedings."

Finally the Soltyses sued on Jan. 11, 2000. "It has been a lengthy and inordinately costly process," Tom Soltys says. "It certainly is not what we anticipated."

Waiting lists have long been a reality for golfers living in large metropolitan areas across the country. In the wealthy enclaves of New York's Westchester County and Connecticut, 74 percent of all private country clubs have waiting lists for admission, says Jay Mottola, the executive director of the Metropolitan Golf Association. In the Boston area, Bill McMahon Sr., founder of the McMahon Group Inc., a consulting firm for private country clubs, says clubs have long waiting lists, some as long as 10 years. "There are so many people vying for the same little piece of real estate," he says.

In times of recession, the lists are a safeguard against falling memberships, and the wait may be brief, a year or so as people leave for financial reasons. On the West Coast, there are waiting lists to sell memberships as well as waiting-list members to purchase them. (The club oversees the transaction and keeps what is often a 30-percent transfer fee.)

Some new members don't mind waiting, because they are members at other clubs. But some become discouraged--and angry. "They pay the full initiation fee, and it's really a false promise," McMahon says. "It creates a lot of ill will."

Paying for renovations

For more than a decade, Wellesley's golf membership had soared. Even before the Soltyses joined, the club's golf chairman, Mike O'Connell, called the club's 630-plus golf members in all categories "a staggering number." Add to that, he said in a 1994 report to the annual meeting, "we have 144 members on our golf wait list."

In 1997, there were 279 people on the list "with a wait of up to 14 years for full golf," wrote Palmer, who chaired the long-range planning committee whose report is now part of the court record. In depositions, club officials say that in the late 1980s and early 1990s the club had become reliant on initiation fees to avoid operating at a loss. Renovations of the clubhouse and golf shop from 1988 to 1990 cost $4.4 million. In 1994, then-club president Alan R. Miller wrote the membership: "We depend heavily on new-member entrance fees for our operating budget." In Palmer's deposition, she said that in 1991, when the waiting list began, "the increase in the membership was to help fund the renovations."

Wellesley Country Club raised $1.38 million in nonrefundable initiation fees from the 200-plus new members to whom it sold certificates from 1991 to 1995, according to court documents.

Palmer, who did not respond to telephone requests for an interview, stated in a 1996 survey of members that "a significant number of respondents indicated that they had been told the wait for full golf would be two to three years. They feel misled, deceived and frustrated. ... Several commented that this issue is brewing and is a potential source of trouble for the club."

Trouble came when the Soltyses filed their civil suit. They charged the club with intentional misrepresentation and fraud, breach of contract and violation of the state's antidiscrimination laws. "WCC was aggressively adding certificate owners while providing full golf to a very small proportion of waiting-list members each year," says Matthew P. Poppel, the Soltyses' attorney.

Tom Soltys was the designated golf member in the family, but Mary Ann had full spousal privileges. Relying on Wellesley's representations, the couple left Blue Hill Country Club, where Mary Ann had been a women's champion. After they joined, Mary Ann found out that Tom had been invited to play in the men's group's tournaments on weekends, but the women's 18-hole group was not open to her. "I was very upset," she says. "I was the one driving the change from our old club to this one, and I was the one who wound up not being able to play in the major tournaments."