The most expensive golf memberships are charged at the most private and exclusive golf clubs. By definition, these elite private clubs like to keep their affairs private. This includes their membership fees.
These are not clubs you can rock up to the front desk and ask for a membership pack and the sheet with the membership fees for each category please. If, indeed, there is even a set fee.
I grew up in the Seventies and Eighties near Swinley Forest Golf Club, a club founded by the Earl of Derby. In those days, there was a membership list pinned up inside the front door. Headed by the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duke of York, it contained around 200 names.
The course is a superb Berkshire heathland one, with its famous Redan green 4th hole, and the food in the clubhouse was rightly famed as being equally superb. Her Majesty the Queen Mother would go to the club just to eat. “Oh don’t be silly, do sit down and get on with your meal,” she is reputed to have said when the diners stood up when she entered the room.
Swinley Forest’s clubhouse
(Image credit: Getty Images)
A neighbour of ours got to know a Swinley member on their daily train commute into London. Said neighbour was a keen golfer and a senior director of a multi-national company and, after about three months of 1st-class carriage sharing, he felt able to ask how much does it cost to be a member of Swinley.
“If you have to ask, you can’t afford it!” came the smiling reply.
Indeed, it was said locally that there was no set membership subscription. The club merely worked out what it cost them to run it and divided this among the members.
Swinley Forest’s par-3 4th hole with its Redan green
It was also rumoured that when the club needed an expensive new piece of machinery a raffle was held among the members, and the person whose name was drawn out paid the full cost of the machine.
But then many stories have attached themselves to Swinley, and some are undoubtedly not true.
Not many miles away from Swinley Forest is Queenwood, which is private to the point of secretiveness. The club does have a website, but you have to get permission from the club to access it.
A rumpus over how the club was being run resulted in a story appearing in the Sunday Times in April 2024 after members were informed of a…
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