Club members, step aside: playing on tournaments

Graham Hamilton Andrews has been a member of Wentworth Club, the site of this week's BMW PGA championship for more than 50 years. At this point he is used to being kicked off his home job once a year.

"The members welcome the PGA to a certain extent because it gives the club a compliment," said Mr. Andrews, a retired foreign director for Beefeater Gin. "We wouldn't want to lose it. But there is considerable discomfort with it, especially with regard to parking."

It is better than the 23 years that members had to give up the course for two professional golf tournaments. Wentworth organized the HSBC World Match Play Tournament from 1964 to 2007, and the BMW arrived in 1984.

Being a member of a club that organizes a professional golf tournament is certainly respected Golf is one of the few sports where amateurs can play the same line-up Tournaments allow players to compare their shots with the pros – and perhaps best on a hole of two.

But these events are not without hassle, especially in a private club whose members are used to A modern professional golf tournament is like a traveling circus with large tents for business hospitality, which take months to set up and take down

Wentworth, a former estate with a castle for a clubhouse, is unlike many elite clubs. Besides the Westbaan, where the championship will be contested this week, it has two other 18-hole courses and a nine-hole par-3 course.

Such & abundance of golf can make a member more casual about the annual inconvenience of a professional golf tournament.

It also allows members to dream a little. Mike Karpik, who works in the financial world, was a member when he worked in London for 20 years. He remembers that he had played the other courses during the tournament.

"We could play the Edinburgh course while the public walked the West course, and that was pretty cool," he said.

"You would go to the clubhouse and watch the pros. In general, we enjoyed the tour; you play a course every week, and then you watch the pros play the same hole as you."

He admitted that the wave of golf helped. "The experience would be different if you didn't have the other course," he said.

Neil Coulson, CEO of Wentworth, said the club had taken extra steps to support members in setting up, playing and cleaning up the tournament.The club also offers members dining and event options during the tournament week.

Yet an annual tournament – let alone two in one years – many are for every club For five decades, Westchester County Club, a large and venerable club outside of New York City, organized an annual PGA tournament.

The Westchester Classic, as is known, attracted a strong field to a challenging, classic job, the champions of the event are the golf celebrities Jack Nicklaus, Sergio Garcia and Vijay Singh, who won several times.

Like Wentworth, Westchester members were able to play on a different course in the early years. More recently, members were not able to play golf, but they still had access to the club's facilities, such as the tennis complex and beach club.

But when the PGA Tour reconsidered the event later in the season to become part of what became the FedEx Cup, the club reconsidered.

"With the new contract, the tour wanted to take over the entire complex," said Peter Knobloch, a member who co-chairs various tournaments at the club.

“That is not sustainable, at least not every year. If it matters a lot, we can easily adjust it. "

Now the Westchester club wants some space between events." Our board has decided that we want to hold events here, but we don't want to have events every year, "said Tom Pisano, president of the

Since the Westchester Classic has ended, the club has hosted a Senior PGA Championship and a Women's PGA Championship and in 2021 it will be the site of the Women & # 39; s Women & # 39; s Amateur.

The largest tournaments provide members with breathing space between events, but disruptions are still significant before the game begins.Watered Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, NY, organizes the 2020 United States Open, and the East Course of the The club will be closed all year round to allow the creation of hospitality tents and the repair work afterwards.The West Course, which will host the Open, will be available to members play until the week before and reopened the week there after. most difficult of the Open locations, designed to test the best in the world.

Nevertheless, club members were concerned about the care of the East Course, which is in 52nd place in the country. At any other club in the United States, a top course would not be used to park camera cars.

"Getting Oostbaan back into good condition quickly is important," said Bryan Marsal, the president of the 2020 Open. & # 39; The U.S.G.A. has realized how important it is to reduce the intrusion and the damage that is being done. "

Mr. Marsal said that the money the club received from hosting an Open was nice, but that this did not always justify the lost use. However, members are motivated by other factors.

"People who play at Winged Foot are often serious golfers," he said. "And the statutes in 1923 said that Winged Foot would become a place where championships are held. You get an offer to organize the national championship, that's a pretty big honor."

The second, he said, is a basic human trait: "Flattery. I am a member of a club that organizes a national championship."

As with every club, not everyone agrees with every decision, and Mr. Marsal said that he had the disruption of members during a golf season, a season that is already short in the northeast. "My biggest concern is that I'm not just sitting at a table at the end of the Open," he said. "I'm joking about it but it really is a great sacrifice for membership. "

In this sense, large public courses have an advantage: they lose some daily costs in the short term, but they more than recuperate them because the event serves as a advertisement for the course, as was the case with the Open at Pebble Beach Golf Links this year.

"One of the major benefits for us is to show that Pebble Beach is open to the public," said David Stivers, president of the Pebble Beach Company and president of the 2019 Open.

In Wentworth, one of Mr. Andrews' favorite memories came in the prime of Nicklaus, and he and a friend followed Nicklaus all the way in. The next morning the friend called from the airport and had the front page of one of the Sunday papers: they had the camera captured while they saw Nicklaus playing the fifth hole.

"There we were," said Mr. Andrews. "I have been trying all day to get a copy of that photo get it. "