I am headed out to my local club in Connecticut, Hop Meadow, in a few minutes to play my first round of golf there in two months.  I've spent the last eight weeks in coastal South Carolina.  After my round today, I will have played eight rounds at Hop Meadow this year, including a two-day member tournament.  The course opened for the year in April.  
    I must love my home course because, when I divide the number of rounds into the total dues I've paid this year, each of those eight rounds has cost me - gulp - more than $500.  Stated another way, I could have played the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island this summer more than a dozen times for what I've paid in dues.  
    I was warned many years ago by a friend and fellow club member not ever to calculate the per-round costs of my private club membership.  This was during a year when we had two toddlers at home and I felt guilty about leaving my wife Connie alone with the burden.  I played only a handful of rounds at Hop Meadow that year.  Dues, I figured then, would have paid for a few rounds at Pebble Beach, airfare included.
    On more or less a fixed income over the last two years (subliminal message, please sign up for our HomeOnTheCourse community guide), I've taken to thinking more and more about the cost vs. usage equation of private club ownership.  I've decided there certainly are intangibles that you can't put a price on but what they are worth is a purely personal calculation.  The civilized approach to making a tee time, for example, is certainly worth something.  The sense of ownership your fellow members feel will make it more than likely that pitch marks are fixed on the greens and divots replaced (or reseeded) in the fairways.  
    Your private course will be in better shape than the muni across town and is likely to have a board of directors that will hear your grievances about club management and even about fellow players who might not be treating the course and the club's facilities with due respect.  There is also some comfort in seeing the same faces on the practice range and in the dining room time and again, assuming you have chosen a club with likable members.  Your golf pro is more likely to be out on the practice range or green imparting free advice, or telling stories, than the pro at a public facility, who is likely anchored behind the desk in the pro shop.  The list of intangibles goes on and on...
    In the end, each of us will decide what exclusivity and the extra measure of "civility" and pride of place is worth.  As you consider possible relocation to a golf course community with a private club inside the gates or nearby, have an idea of how often you are going to play, but also consider what value you put on the intangibles.  Consider joining as a social member first, but make sure that golf privileges are available at that level, and check out how easy or difficult it will be to upgrade your membership if you find the club and course to your liking.  You might also play a few rounds at the local semi-private courses, looking closely at whether ownership and golfers appear to have pride in the course.  My over/under on course maintenance is two un-repaired pitch marks per green; more than two signals that boorish golfers play there, and fewer shows at least some modicum of respect for the course.
    Most important, resolve before you join a private club that the pro rata costs of each round are beside the point.  In that way, you will spare yourself the ugly calculation that you could have played at St. Andrews, or Ballybunion, or Whistling Straits instead.

    In researching golf courses and the communities that surround them, I have been fortunate to play more than 1,350 holes of golf over the last two years.  To ensure my objectivity, and lest anyone think I have an elaborate scam going, I paid for every round, often arguing with pro shop staff that had been instructed by their real estate counterparts to provide me with complimentary greens fees.  My comments at this site and in the HomeOnTheCourse community guide are happily free of any marketing hype.  
    Overall, I have gotten my monies worth in these two years.  I have played very few clunker courses, and some courses and golf holes have been memorable.  Below are photos and short descriptions of some of the best holes I've encountered.

 

The signature par 3 12th at Tennessee National certainly is one of the best holes that Greg Norman has ever designed.

Some memorable holes in unforeseen places

    The most memorable hole of my last two years on the road actually was one I did not play.  The course at Tennessee National, a high-end community with lot prices in the mid six figures and about a half-hour from Knoxville, TN, was about two months short of being open for play, but it was clear that the Greg Norman layout had the makings of a classic.  Its signature hole, as most signature holes are, is a par 3 that maximizes the twin features of water and sand.  Wisely Norman and his fellow developers from the Medalist Company placed the tee box close to the main drive into the community.  It is impossible to drive by without stopping for a look (and in my case, the photo above).  Not surprisingly, the community's web site and promotional literature feature Mr. Norman about to strike his tee shot on the 12th toward the green below.
    From the back tees, the hole plays downhill 209 yards, with the shorter tees playing to 187, 166, 142 and 123.  Eight deep bunkers, with sod faces, surround the green, four of them pot sized and built into the face of the slope in front.  Hit short, and you could fall back down the slope into a creek that feeds the Tennessee River, which runs along the entire right side and below the green.  Any pushed tee shot will be lucky to find one of the two bunkers there; hit the slope between the bunkers, and you will be playing your third shot two club lengths from the water.  The only bailout opportunity is to the slope left of the green, but that will necessitate an uphill pitch shot to the pin.  In two years, I've seen no finer, or intimidating, par 3 than the #12 at Tennessee National.  Norman's organization has a nice array of photos of Tennessee National and his other courses at www.shark.com .
    I'd love to have another shot (literally) one day at the 17th at Tom Fazio's Keowee Vineyards course for The Cliffs Communities.  A few years ago, the par 3 was the toughest hole on the Nationwide Tour in relation to par (closer to playing as a par 4 than a par 3).  Although I had no business playing the hole from the tips, I had to try the downhill shot to the green some 270 yards away (the elevation probably made it play about 250).  I hit driver short and left of the green, away from the lake on the right, and considered myself lucky to be left with a 20-yard pitch to a pin that was front left.  I made the putt from inside 10 feet for par but fought back the urge to sign up for the Nationwide Tour right then and there.  
    Another memorable hole was perhaps the quirkiest, a par 5 at Red Tail Mountain in Mountain City, TN, located between Boone, NC and Knoxville.  The par 5 12th at Red Tail starts from a tee box framed by a chute of trees.  A large hump runs 50 yards down the landing zone area in the fairway; anything on the left or right side of the fairway will continue in that direction and into the rough.  It almost doesn't matter, since the next shot is a medium iron lay-up to the right angle of the fairway, just 100 yards from the green.  Hit too far, and you wind up in a sand bunker at the elbow.  Hit too short, and a tall, dense group of trees blocks your access to the most unusual green I encountered in two years (maybe ever).  Guarding the right front of the putting surface is a large rock outcropping; hit it and you could wind up anywhere, including straight back in your direction.  Behind the entire green is a rock wall about 30 feet high; it is an unreliable backstop as balls hit over the green bound in most directions other than onto the green.  As you stand in the fairway awaiting your approach shot, you wonder what mad genius conceived the hole. (The answer?  The typically mild mannered Dan Maples).
    I played only one 9 hole layout in the last two years, during a visit with my son to look at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN.  The Sewanee Golf Club course, which was built by faculty, students and local residents in 1915, traversed a hardscrabble, up and down routing that I found a bit of a trek on a cold February day.  Sewanee was golf au naturel, with no more than a half dozen sand bunkers, but what it may have lacked in modern touches it more than made up for in its classic use of terrain.  Few fairways were level, and Sewanee's small greens were all best approached by run up shots; the turf on the greens was almost as firm as that of the fairways (the course has no irrigation system).  Two putts were a blessing on any hole, none more than the unforgettable 4th, a 160-yard uphill par 3 to the narrowest green I had ever played, less than 20 feet across its front and not much wider at any other point.  We were fortunate the pin was up front; the very back of the green was a mere four paces to the edge of the mountain.  The only benefit to hitting the ball over the green would have been the breathtaking views of the valley below and the Smoky Mountains dead ahead.  It was an unforgettable hole on a golf course that time has forgotten, but I won't.

    The private, gated community of Mountain Air in Burnsville, NC, is a favorite of well-heeled pilots because an airstrip runs through it, and through the heart of the golf course as well.  At more than 4,000 feet, there is plenty to distract the golfer's eye, but nothing more so than the sight of an airplane taking off below your tee box or beside the green you are putting on.  The strip is not exactly in play, but a dramatically pushed or pulled drive on one of the adjacent holes could, ahem, really take off.

 

There is a fine line between quirky and dramatic along the runway at Mountain Air.