Death of the Country Club
City JournalCountry clubs once served as communal centers for social climbers. Dating to the 1880s, the clubs—modeled on the British aristocracy’s country houses—opened in the bucolic outskirts of industrial cities and towns. For a growing upper-middle-class, wealth permitted entry into this local society. Golf, dormant since the colonial era, became the favored sport for club members; in 1895 alone, more than 100 courses opened. Country clubs would help shape the development of streetcar suburbs, with stately homes lining manicured courses. By the Great Depression, nearly 4,500 country clubs existed across the country.
Throughout the twentieth century, the club’s influence was reflected by its prominent place in American literature. “In Zenith it was as necessary for a Successful Man to belong to a country club as it was to wear a linen collar,” wrote Sinclair Lewis in his 1922 novel, Babbitt. A decade later, in Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara documented how a set of missteps at a country club could destroy a man’s social standing. In the 1950s, John Cheever’s short stories revealed the centrality of club life to upper-middle-class suburban America. Philip Roth’s first book, Goodbye, Columbus, sets a New Jersey country club as the stage for exploring class divisions in a youthful romance. John Updike’s 1981 Rabbit is Rich offered the country club as a paradise of relaxed indulgence; by 1990, in Rabbit at Rest, the poolside and fairways of the club are shadowed by mortality.
By the early 1960s, shortly after Roth’s fiction debut, the U.S. had 3,330 clubs, with 1.7 million members—fewer than during the Roaring Twenties, but membership now extended beyond “old money.” The typical postwar suburb featured several country clubs, divided by ethnicity and class, where young professionals and successful businessmen enjoyed status, exclusivity, and recreation. The prosperous Reagan years yielded even more clubs—and baby boomer members—though concerns started to emerge about changing lifestyles, age-old restrictions, and exorbitant fees. Country clubs responded with family-oriented attractions and cheaper “junior memberships” for younger people. More than 5,000 clubs operated during the 1990s, and thanks to Tiger Woods’s ascendance, the golf market enjoyed a 20-year period of growth.
The Great Recession changed the club’s fortunes. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Americans born between 1981 and 1996 are financially outmatched by every generation since the Depression. Despite higher levels of education, millennials have “less wealth, less property, lower marriage rates, and fewer children.” Annual country club dues, which run in the thousands of dollars, put membership beyond practical reach for many. Leisure for today’s younger adults more often involves streaming TV shows in a high-rent city bedroom, not playing 18 holes on a suburban green.
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I used to be a cook at one. This is exactly what is going on; members don't really want to pay as much anymore.
I didn't last long, to be fair. I never really liked the excess, especially the food. I did learn some advanced garde manger skills, though, so it was worth that at least! 
who said a lot of golfers are leaving the sport because it is difficult to get the ball into that little cup on the green, so the GPA is considering installing larger cups to bring back golfers. I've never played golf, but this big cup thing seems almost funny.
are curated, protected green spaces, something we're running out of? 
because even though my dad was a doctor, he was also an Italian immigrant...
(winter clubs are country clubs that also have their own skating rinks, in NY at least) 
There's tee times, course fees, the equipment (and golf equipment gets RIDICULOUSLY fucking expensive), the golf carts, golf balls and so on and so on. With our money all going to the upper 1% how are we supposed to have hobbies? 
