When I was a member at Foxhills, a modern country club in the UK, golf did not feel like the intimidating sport I had grown up imagining. It sat alongside a spa, gym, tennis courts and restaurants. People arrived in gym kit, golf clothes, or jeans and a jumper. You could have a lesson, stay for a coffee, then sit and socialise, or do your work.
Later, when I spent time at a resort style course abroad, it was a similar story. Golf lived within a wider experience. You met people by the pool, or at the bar, and only afterwards realised they were also members of the golf course. Golf did not have to be the starting point. It could grow naturally out of everything else that was going on at the resort.
