One of the Biggest Stories in Golf Happened this Month and Nobody Noticed
Pine Valley GC’s settlement, access journalism, and golf’s self-perpetuating prestige industry
I’ve been thinking about how to write this post for months. Writing about the problems with exclusive, private clubs is nuanced, and often is more political than even I am comfortable with. However, a story broke this month that I think articulates the point I want to make here, and the fact that you probably aren’t even familiar with it highlights my concerns.
Pine Valley has agreed to a settlement with the state of New Jersey to end a discrimination lawsuit brought by the state’s Division on Civil Rights accusing the club of violating the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.1 There are three prongs of the Law Against Discrimination: employment, housing, and public accommodation. The Attorney General's complaint2 is overt in stating they are accusing Pine Valley GC of violating the law with regards to gender discrimination in terms of all three of these conditions:
Employment: offering jobs to men preferentially and discriminating on attire between genders.
Housing: sale of housing only available for men to purchase.
Public Accommodation: this one is quite technical. Typically private clubs do not provide a public accommodation, but Pine Valley GC purchased a very significant amount of land in Pine Valley, NJ, which was later incorporated into a town.3 The Attorney General's office argues that, because the golf course is part of the town, it must provide some form of public accommodation. (Again, this is quite technical and a bit over my head).
The charges are quite serious in terms of civil rights violations, and touch every aspect of the relevant New Jersey law. I would encourage anyone to read the full settlement4 (it’s short). The details go on to describe pretty run-of-the-mill discrimination policies; almost cliché when compared to the more abrasive controversies by other prominent clubs.
Why is this significant?
Pine Valley GC is the #1 rated golf course in America, by both leading ranking publications: Golf Magazine (GOLF.com) and Golf Digest.
So what do Golf Magazine and Golf Digest have to say on this controversy?
Golf Magazine — I can find nothing…
…even on google:
Golf Digest, to their credit, did publish an article5 when the complaint was originally made:
As far as I know, however, they have not published a follow up since the settlement was reached.
Access journalism and golf culture
Before news of this settlement broke, I was writing about US Open venue LACC, Los Angeles’ housing crisis, property taxes, increasing political hostility towards golf courses, and its effects on municipal golf.6
LACC is probably paying about $320,000 in annual property taxes despite owning 300 acres literally bordering Beverly Hills, CA.7 Obviously, valuation here is nearly impossible, but my back-of-the-envelope calculation has them paying about a 0.06% rate.8 That’s orders of magnitude lower than what a new homeowner or farmer would pay. This is at a time when the housing crisis is so bad that, multiple years in a row, the California Assembly has proposed bills that would pay cities to convert their municipal golf courses into housing developments.9 Golfweek did republish an article from the Palm Springs Desert Sun on that topic (both publications are part of the Gannett media conglomerate).10
In the run up to the US Open, there is zero discussion of the effect that large, tax-advantaged, open swaths of land have on the political dynamic, which is fair enough. The US Open is about golf, not politics. The problem with all of this is that when golf media ignores the stark political dynamics at play, those stories still get written, just for other audiences in different publications.
What happens when golf media is forced to look inward
Often those other writers and publications have a limited understanding of golf history, law, and culture, which doesn’t help. Which is why almost every golf enthusiast knows Malcom Gladwell’s obscure opinions on golf. For the few folks reading this who don’t follow golf media, in June 2017, Malcom Gladwell published an episode of his podcast Revisionist History about golf, taxes and private open space.11 The details of this podcast are long, controversial, and not entirely well argued. Suffice it to say, it made such an impact that it had to be addressed by golf media.1213 I only bring this up because when golf media is forced to grapple with tough topics, they will sheepishly admit there is a very real problem, suggest things should change, and then move right on back to unequivocal praise of private, exclusive clubs while ignoring their effects on the greater culture.
I certainly do not mean to pick on anyone in particular here (it’s an industry-wide problem), but I want to discuss the “What Malcom Gladwell got wrong about golf” episode of The Drop Zone podcast, published by Golf Magazine.14 This podcast is responding to a prominent episode of Gladwell’s podcast, Revisionist History. The content of the podcast is mixed at best, but I mainly want to focus on the way these podcasters responded to criticisms they agreed with.
Here, it’s important that the podcasters here are not the editors of Golf Magazine. However, I think it’s important to remember that Golf Magazine is one of the two major publications that rank golf courses. Anyway, The Drop Zone hosts of the podcast are definitely supportive of more access:
“So you’re saying we don’t need more golf courses, we just need to maintain accessibility, I can get down with that.”15
“Maybe courses receiving tax breaks in this way should find a way to share more with the public.”16
“I don’t know, but maybe there’s a way that courses could provide tee times to the public or one day a week, you know, have people bring their dogs out and… use the open space of the golf course.”17
“Maybe there’s some creative solutions, that people in the community could come up with, to bridge this gap between public and private in a more satisfactory way”18
The hosts also fully admit that this is a problem:
“Golf should continue to worry about this PR problem, this image problem. A lot of people are not pro-golf. They don’t want courses reopening, for instance, during these coronavirus shutdowns… I don’t know, people think that golf is just a useless thing, reserved for a small subset of the population… Golf has earned its reputation over a long period of time. A lot of people feel the same way that he [Gladwell] does. So, I don’t know… we’ve still got some stuff in the golf world to sort out.”19
“On the inside I’m sure it’s absolutely gorgeous, and I’m sure you and I are not going to get invited to play there any time soon. That being said, there’s somewhere in the middle where we can meet and keep these golf courses, keep a lot of them open to the public, and also keep Mr. Gladwell happy as a runner and non-golfer.”20
Finally, they even casually admonish private courses for their anti-social behavior:
“Golf courses, remember, be good neighbors because people are always going to be looking in through your fences”21
The hosts modestly call for these Los Angeles private golf clubs to open up, which is understandable given the very tough position of defending clear, near-irrevocable tax-advantages, and otherwise exclusionary practices that are very unpopular when they come up. However, when it comes to handing out accolades, the very same parent publication is happy to ignore any of these concerns.
We may think you’re a bad actor, but here’s a blue ribbon for being so amazing
Golf Magazine and Golf Digest are happy to publish the occasional admission that golf has some PR problems when forced to. Then they publish their influential top 100 course lists with the bad actors right on top. Each time I see them, I find myself rolling my eyes more and more. The contrast in rank versus accessibility and historic exclusion is obvious. Here, I have noted the exclusive/inaccessible clubs in bold:2223
As is tradition lately, Pine Valley sits on the top of the list. It might be notable to some that this list was published Nov 8th, 2022, six months after the New Jersey Attorney General filed their civil rights complaint against Pine Valley GC.
Also, while Malcolm Gladwell focused specifically on Brentwood CC, his podcast spoke generally about all the private courses in the west Los Angeles area. Golf Magazine places US Open host Los Angeles CC as 10th in America. Riviera is ranked 14th and Bel-Air as 67th best. Those Drop Zone podcast hosts say they aren’t being invited to these courses, but some agent of Golf Magazine is and is happy to hand these clubs these accolades, in spite of the criticisms.
Update: note that in the 2023 list, the only publicly accessible course, Pebble Beach, has been knocked out of the top ten, and is replaced by Seminole GC (private). Pine Valley remains #1 (even after it had come to a settlement with the NJ Attorney General).24
This isn’t about canceling anyone, it’s about being honest about potential self-reinforcing problems of access journalism and access-as-currency
Here is where people will begin pointing out that the top 100 courses are about the courses, not the clubs. I tend to agree; it’s just a dumb list that’s fun for these magazines to put together (course raters aren’t even required to have actually played the courses they are rating25). I’m not trying to cancel Pine Valley GC here. In fact, to their credit, they complied fairly quickly with the investigation, and seemingly came to the settlement in good faith. My point is about access journalism and how problematic it can be.
I want to openly contend that private exclusiveness of certain golf courses has an effect on what gets reported about them. Open criticism of municipal course Chambers Bay is found in the same publications that are mum about serious civil rights violations at Pine Valley.26 People should be more honest about the access-as-currency that exclusive private courses offer. I find it hard to believe extremely limited access doesn’t, at least subconsciously, affect the course rankings. It also very obviously muddies the waters with regards to open and honest criticism within the golf community. Again, when I talk about access here, I don’t mean access as just something desirable, I mean access as literally-interfering-with-our-legal-system valuable.27
Since all the top-ranked courses in America are all private and exclusive, how could anyone offer a counter-argument? Lack of falsifiability always creates a legitimacy problem. If the idea that just getting behind the velvet ropes is a once-in-a-lifetime-if-you’re-lucky event, how can we expect objectivity in the slightest? Even the raters are sometimes asked to trust folks who, themselves, are either directly affiliated with these clubs, or are there themselves on a very limited, invite-only basis. If we look at this from a game-theoretic perspective, we might expect a grim-trigger chilling effect on any criticism, much less public criticism. It’s what we see in this friendly reporting, we might expect it in these rankings.
Anyone can openly criticize Pebble Beach or Chambers Bay (and they do), because anyone can visit them: they’re happy to sell the tee times to anyone who will pay for them. The folks lobbing these criticisms can always go back if they change their mind. Not so with the intricate relationship-jockeying that is the world of private clubs.
What we lose as a culture
I’m sure most people do not think that course-review methodology for some silly annual rankings matter. I just worry that the prestige, and reverence they confer, is reinforcing the access problem that we started with. Prestige is what gives these closed institutions power, and I worry that it is preventing us all from having open conversations about some of these real cultural issues in golf. Cultural norms around discrimination, taxes, and land use can be tough for the culture to agree on, but these growing problems need to be addressed. It can be especially difficult to address these topics when we’re operating our high profile events at the same venues where these issues are relevant. We can see here how exclusive courses maintain much of the cultural focus (again, inaccessible courses in bold):282930
I see lack of access to championship courses, alone, as a major loss for US Golf culture. I’m glad things have been becoming more accessible over time, and I’m glad the PGA Tour put their foot down a long time ago over some of the worst behaviors.31 Still, that most of our championships are still at inaccessible courses makes little sense to me. Is it any wonder that golf is so associated with the accouterments of country club denizens? I’m certain that there are traditional, financial, and/or practical reasons why it is easier to host a championship at a private course, but it makes so little sense in terms of audience engagement.
A private course plays host to a few thousand people per year; public courses can host over a hundred thousand. Having hundreds of thousands of people with an intimate relationship with a course should really matter. Watching a championship is different in kind when someone knows the course. They know how challenging that huge carry is, how nasty those bunkers are, and know how treacherous the undulations on the greens are. No matter how many times you’ve watched and studied Augusta National, the cliche is that people say the elevation is more intense, and the bunkers are deeper in real life.
What others might see as exclusive clubs opening their gates to the public, I see as another championship detached from the normal golfers.
It’s not about private clubs per se
The principles behind private clubs seem fair enough: a group of like-minded individuals get together to combine their resources and build a golf course (building a golf course is expensive after all). Operating privately seems completely fair. From here, I think the legal restrictions on access for 507(c)(7) are a major problem. By legally allowing private courses to provide some level of access, we could formalize the distinction between private and exclusive clubs. I think many of the rankings for exclusive clubs would tumble if general access were legal (and the relatively low rankings of exclusive clubs in the UK reflect this).32
There are some other issues I may eventually discuss, but here, the intersection of media, access, and rankings (and the prestige and influence that comes with them) is what I find so troubling with restrictive private clubs in America. I think it’s a problem, and is one that doesn’t seem to exist in every region.
Vadala, Nick. “Pine Valley Golf Club agrees to settlement in gender-based discrimination lawsuit.” Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 May 2023, https://www.inquirer.com/news/pine-valley-golf-club-discrimination-lawsuit-settlement-20230510.html. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Office of The Attorney General, Division on Civil Rights. “Acting AG Platkin Announces Filing of Civil Rights Complaint Against Pine Valley Golf Club - New Jersey Office of Attorney General.” New Jersey Attorney General, 27 April 2022, https://www.njoag.gov/acting-ag-platkin-announces-filing-of-civil-rights-complaint-against-pine-valley-golf-club/. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Duhart, Bill. “N.J. county commissioner says consolidation of elite golf course 'town' with neighbor was long overdue.” NJ.com, 28 April 2022, https://www.nj.com/news/2022/04/nj-county-commissioner-says-consolidation-of-elite-golf-course-town-with-neighbor-was-long-overdue.html. Accessed 19 May 2023.
“State of New Jersey v Pine Valley GC: Settlement Agreement.” NJ.gov, 10 May 2023, https://www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases23/2023-0510_PV-SA-Final-Agreement-May-10-2023-fully-executed.pdf. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Beall, Joel. “New Jersey files civil-rights complaint against Pine Valley.” Golf Digest, 28 April 2022, https://www.golfdigest.com/story/pine-valley-complaint. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Hilliard, John. “‘This is unjust and wrong’: State program slashes elite golf clubs’ property taxes.” The Boston Globe, 2 May 2023, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/05/02/metro/this-is-unjust-wrong-amid-economic-downturn-state-program-slashes-elite-golf-clubs-property-taxes/. Accessed 23 May 2023.
LACC golf courses are made up of four parcels, AINs and 2022 property taxes owed as cited by property tax inquiry via Los Angeles County Treasurer and Tax Collector:
4359-018-008: $160,160.59
4359-020-006: $48,507.98
4359-018-007: $7,703.17
4327-027-001: $104,454.99
Total: $320,826.73
298 acres
Based on the nearby offer of 0.416 acres of raw land for $749,888, this was the most sizable piece of raw land that was very close to the course: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1689-N-Wild-Rose-Ln-Los-Angeles-CA-90077/2066673463_zpid/
298 acres should be valued at about $537,179,385. Obviously the details of this land-offer and where it’s equivalent is very debatable. I would suggest that LACC is vastly more valuable land. $320,826.73/$537,179,385 = 0.06%
San Francisco Public Golf Alliance. “The Golf Endangerment Act is Back! It's Time to Write Your Opposition Letter | San Francisco Public Golf.” San Francisco Public Golf Alliance, 24 March 2022, https://www.sfpublicgolf.org/index.php/news-events/post/the-golf-endangerment-act-is-back-its-time-to-write-your-opposition-letter. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Bohannan, Larry. “Bill aimed at converting California municipal courses to housing is back — for a third time.” Golfweek, 19 February 2022, https://golfweek.usatoday.com/2022/02/19/bill-converting-california-municipal-courses-housing-ab1910/. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Gladwell, Malcom. “Revisionist History: A Good Walk Spoiled.” Pushkin Industries, Pushkin Industries, 14 June 2017, https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/a-good-walk-spoiled. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Beall, Joel. “Here's where Malcolm Gladwell misses the mark with his take on golf.” Golf Digest, 15 June 2017, https://www.golfdigest.com/story/heres-where-malcolm-gladwell-misses-the-mark-with-his-take-on-golf. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Dethier, Dylan. “10 things Malcolm Gladwell got wrong about golf (plus 3 he got right).” GOLF.com, 13 May 2020, https://golf.com/news/malcolm-gladwell-wrong-golf-10-things/. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Zak, Sean, and Dylan Dethier. “What Malcolm Gladwell got wrong about golf | Drop Zone - GOLF Podcast.” Drop Zone - GOLF Podcast, 12 May 2020, https://dropzonegolf.podbean.com/e/what-malcolm-gladwell-got-wrong-about-golf/. Accessed 19 May 2023.
The Drop Zone: 13:40-14:00
The Drop Zone: 24:50-24:57
The Drop Zone: 25:32-25:45
The Drop Zone: 26:30-26:40
The Drop Zone: 26:45-27:35
The Drop Zone: 28:05-28:21
The Drop Zone: 28:23-28:28
Morrissett, Ran, et al. “Top 100 Courses in the U.S.” GOLF.com, 8 November 2022, https://golf.com/travel/courses/top-100-golf-courses-in-the-us-2022-23-ranking/. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Duncan, Derek, and Stephen Hennessey. “America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses.” GolfDigest.com, Golf Digest, 3 May 2021, https://www.golfdigest.com/story/americas-100-greatest-golf-courses-ranking. Accessed January 2022.
The original list used now redirects to the new ranked list, however this list is preserved by archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20221024034553/https://www.golfdigest.com/gallery/americas-100-greatest-golf-courses-ranking
Duncan, Derek, and Stephen Hennessey. “America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses | Courses.” Golf Digest, 2 May 2023, https://www.golfdigest.com/story/americas-100-greatest-golf-courses-ranking. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Morrissett, Ran. “Inside GOLF's Top 100 Courses vote: How we decide our rankings.” GOLF.com, 2 November 2020, https://golf.com/travel/top-100-vote-how-we-decide-our-course-rankings/. Accessed 22 May 2023.
Stachura, Mike. “One more thing about the greens at Chambers Bay: They may have had an effect on putting.” Golf Digest, 24 June 2015, https://www.golfdigest.com/story/one-more-thing-about-the-green. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Note that media criticism of Chambers Bay was so strong that they eventually replaced their fully fescue greens with poa annua:
Booth, Tim. “New greens in place, Chambers Bay ponders majors future.” Golfweek, 5 June 2019, https://golfweek.usatoday.com/2019/06/05/new-greens-in-place-chambers-bay-ponders-majors-future/. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Strege, John. “But your honor, it's Pine Valley | This is the Loop.” Golf Digest, 1 June 2015, https://www.golfdigest.com/story/but-your-honor-its-pine-valley. Accessed 21 May 2023.
Diaz, Jaime. “Cypress Point Drops PGA Tour Event Instead of Changing Its Rules (Published 1990).” The New York Times, 18 September 1990, https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/18/sports/cypress-point-drops-pga-tour-event-instead-of-changing-its-rules.html. Accessed 23 May 2023.
The top 10 courses from the 2022 Golf Magazine rankings for the UK and Ireland have zero inaccessible courses. The top 10 courses from the 2022 Golf Digest rankings if courses in Scotland have one single inaccessible course, Loch Lomond, ranked 10th. A stark difference.
Golf Editors. “Top 100 Courses in the UK and Ireland, sorted by country.” GOLF.com, 6 July 2022, https://golf.com/travel/top-100-courses-uk-ireland-by-country/. Accessed 23 May 2023.
Hennessey, Stephen, and Derek Duncan. “The Best Golf Courses In Every Country.” Golf Digest, 7 July 2022, https://www.golfdigest.com/story/the-best-golf-courses-in-every-country. Accessed 23 May 2023.