Inwood Country Club driving toward membership sustainability

Thriving just not surviving is the goal of the Inwood Country Club, and membership is up as 59 new members joined for the 2018 season and three more new members have signed on early for 2019, and many are young people and families attracted by the golf, tennis and something most clubs don’t have — a beach club.

The historic venue now 117-years-old, is home to an 18-hole, par 71, 6,639-yard golf course, 10 Har-Tru tennis courts, a Georgian-style clubhouse, driving range and a practice putting green, and three miles away the Inwood Beach Club in Atlantic Beach.

All of these amenities create an environment that has helped membership to grow, while many golf clubs across Long Island and especially in the Five Towns struggle. The 109-year-old Woodmere Club was sold last year and in four years will most likely not exist; from anecdotal evidence the Seawane Country Club is battling the identical problems as other clubs — decreasing membership, less people playing golf — and the Lawrence Yacht & Country Club is doing better but not as well as it was a decade ago.

“We are drawing many new members from New York City, mostly from Brooklyn and Manhattan,” said Membership Chairman and 12-year club member Jerrold Weinstein as he sat in the club’s Bobby Jones Grill Room, along with fellow member Ted Steingut. “We are getting young people and young families,” Weinstein added. Weekend mornings there is a shuttle from the city to the club.

He said that coupled with the amenities there are also dinners on Thursday and Fridays that more local members attend, big Saturday night dinners where up to 350 members attend and occasionally family barbecues on Sundays help to foster a very social environment.

“We rebuilt after [Hurricane] Sandy, retrofitted and fully repaired the beach club,” said Steingut, a retired lawyer, who said he became a member 18 years ago when, “I was shooting the breeze with my adversary in a court case and he told me about the Inwood club.”

Both Steingut and Weinstein touted the tennis, which is getting children involved in the club with summer lessons and yes, there are lessons for golf.

While firmly rooted in its present and looking ahead to the future, the club played a role in golf’s past. The 1921 Professional Golf Association’s championship, won by Walter Hagen, and the 1923 U.S. Open Championship, that included Bobby Jones’ victory and the famous “shot heard ‘round the world,” took place at the club off Peppe Drive. There is memorial to Jones’ shot and Hagen’s Willow — a group of pro golfers paid to have the tree transplanted from the 16th hole to a spot near the 18th to block Hagen’s approach in ’21 — that was lost in Sandy.

As the U.S. Open was played at Shinnecock Hills in Southampton this year, GolfWeek rated the top 100 classic or modern tracks. Inwood, split between a parkland style and links style, and was rated 49th. “The club sells itself,” Weinstein said, “good things are going on here.” Steingut noted there is a 9-hole league that plays on Wednesdays and the rotating Friday game that has been played, “for over 35 years where all caliber of players are welcome, it’s a blind draw with drinks and kibitzing.”

Without the kidding, Joseph Connors, nearly a member for a year, was serious about what he likes about the club. “I’ve played so many rounds with some amazing people,” he wrote in a column for the club’s newsletter. “It’s tough, rewarding and an overall great experience every time I play!”