The highest membership fee for a golf club in the Hamptons used to be $575k, and even at that price, there’s a waiting list. The Jack Nichlaus / Tom Doak designed Sebonack Golf Club, which opened for limited play last weekend in Southampton, breaks that record with a $650k membership fee. And that doesn’t included the $12k annual dues or tips for caddies….
The new club sits between 95-year-old National Golf Links of America and four-time U.S. Open host Shinnecock Hills Golf Club at the eastern end of Long Island. Other neighbors include Atlantic Golf Club and the Bridge, both in Bridgehampton. Membership in those clubs -by invitation only — tops out at $575,000.
“The numbers are all amazing, but you’re dealing with the Hamptons here,” said Phyllis Dixon, a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman, which lists about 2,500 properties in the area. “I guess that’s the going rate.”
The initiation fee at Sebonack doesn’t include the $12,000 annual dues, or items such as tips for caddies. Like most clubs, members can play as much as they like for that price. They will have access to a yet-to-be-built 28,000-square-foot clubhouse and a 19th hole with a green rather than barstools; it’s a par-3 constructed especially to break ties and settle wagers….
Owner Mike Pascucci agreed that his membership fee “just might be” the most expensive, although that wasn’t what he set out to do.
“My goal was to get the best 18 holes out of this piece of land as possible,” he said in a telephone interview. Pascucci, 69, sold Oxford Resources Corp., the car-leasing business he controlled, to Barnett Banks Inc. for $700 million in stock in 1997. He now owns WLNY, a local television station based in Melville, New York.
While Sebonack may be the priciest, the Hamptons aren’t the only place where initiation fees are high. Membership at Koganei Country Club in suburban Tokyo, perennially the most expensive in Japan, rose 21 percent this year to 63 million yen ($560,000), according to a survey reported in the weekly magazine Diamond….
Sebonack has 10 founding members who paid $1.5 million each to join. Among them are Stanley Druckenmiller, chairman of Duquesne Capital Management LLC; Richard Santulli, chief executive of Woodbridge, New Jersey-based NetJets Inc.; Paul Desmarais Jr., chairman of Power Corp. of Canada; and Johann Rupert, chief executive of Geneva-based Cie. Financiere Richemont, the world’s second-largest luxury-goods company….
Hamptons’ Newest Golf Club Has Priciest Membership at $650,000 – Bloomberg
Sebonack featured in Golf Architecture magazine (pdf) (has lots of pictures)
