The High Cost of Clubbing

Not too many years ago, almost every man who achieved the $20,000-a-year bracket--or even $15,000--could join a country club and enjoy it. Today, country club managers quote J. P. Morgan's dictum on yachts: He who asks how much it costs cannot afford it. Country club dues and assessments are rising fast. In the past few years, dues doubled (to $350-$1,000 plus 20% federal tax) in some clubs; they went up as much as 120% in Detroit alone last year, almost 20% in Los Angeles in the past few months. The villain is the cost spiral that hits country clubs so hard that only the biggest operate in the black. The average club, according to accountants Horwath & Horwath, comptrollers general of the country club set, suffered a 7% operating loss last year.

Wages for the Army. The good old club, which nobody thinks of as a business, is taking a businesslike beating from a dozen directions. To give members the kind of service they wish they had at home--but rarely get--full-scale clubs have one employee for every four to ten members, a small army of cooks, clerks, caddies, bartenders, plus a manager who draws $10,000 to $30,000 a year, often plus apartment. That alone gobbles up 40-c- of every revenue dollar. West Coast golf club maintenance workers got 80-c- an hour in 1950; today they get $1.60. Virtually every club loses on its dining room. The club kitchen must always stand ready to serve food to a hundred or a handful. "And believe it or not," complains President G. Walter Ostrand of Chicago's big, choosy Medinah Club, "breakage of dishes and disappearance of silver costs us $5,000 to $10,000 a year."

The club bar usually makes up for food losses. But rare is the club that nets a dime on much else. Good clubs spend an average $2,300 per hole per year to keep up the golf course, another $1,000 to keep up each tennis court, etc., etc.--all of which are maintained for the pleasure of a relatively few members. The $100,000 swimming pool, open from May 30 to Labor Day, flows with red ink.

San Francisco's oceanside Olympic Country Club lost $89,166 in the nine months ending June 30, more than a $100 deficit for each member. Olympic earned $55,241 on the bar and $7,635 from rooms; it fell into the hole on golf ($67,547), food ($23,062), dressing rooms and lockers ($4,754), also lost on general administrative expenses, the telephones and cigar stand.

X Rays for the Bonk Book. What keeps many clubs going is the yearly assessment to cover the losses. Others, like Chicago's Tarn O'Shanter, which has opened its clubhouse to 320 weddings so far this year, scout around for parties, conventions and tournaments, anything to make a dollar. Even some of the oldest clubs X-ray a prospective member's bank account first, his social position second. Says a member of the very exclusive Denver Country Club: "It is true that some of our nice members are the biggest stinkers in town. But heavens, we do not know this to be officially true."

The ultimate salvation of the country club may well be the same thing that, makes supermarkets a multibillion-dollar business: mass appeal at mass prices. Unlike the old-fashioned clubs owned by members, a new class of club is starting up owned by businessmen, who frankly aim at big memberships as the road to survival. In Dallas, eight new clubs have opened since the prewar era, and most of them run one membership drive after another. Four more are being formed. In Denver, the Pinehurst Country Club will open next spring on 300 acres to cater to the new class of up-by-the-bootstraps lawyers, engineers, doctors and almost anyone else who wants in. Says Manager Ray E. Hubbard: "Our typical member will be a man of 34 who is buying a good house and furniture and two automobiles." With a projected membership of 2,000, Pinehurst can offer bargain prices. Initiation fee: $300. Dues: $144.

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