When did our golf clubs decide they needed more security features than your average prison?

Visitors welcome? You could have fooled me. It was more like entering a prison than a golf club. I half expected to be stripped naked, drowned by a hosepipe, doused in talc, and then sent off to a cell in nothing but a regulation polo shirt and slacks. With white socks, of course.

It was an above average place. By that I mean they fancied themselves. Massive SUVs and Beemers were parked badly all over the shop.

It was the sort of club that’s desperate to be considered exclusive but might be risking bankruptcy if they didn’t slum it by allowing the hoi-polloi to occasionally roam around to help fill the coffers.

The result of this ‘we’re really great, but we need the cash’ approach is that a curious halfway house ensues and it’s not the sort where you receive a dram before hitting the back nine.

What I mean is they make the whole experience as foreboding as possible in the hope you might never darken said doors again.

You get a pro whose welcome is little more than a raising of their eyebrow, or a steward who queries your post-round order by barking, ‘who are you?’ while proclaiming he can only fulfil your request for a fourball of pints if it’s delivered by a member.

Worst of all, they employ a gate system even the bloke who wrote the Da Vinci Code would have considered ridiculous.

I just can’t get my head around golf club gates

It does not turn the club into the fortress they think. It might look maximum security but it’s more poundshop Colditz.

I don’t know if anyone’s ever revealed this to them, but burglars don’t tend to come in through the front doors.

And even if they did, they are unlikely to stand in front of one of these gates, stroke their chins, and say ‘well, that’s that lads’. People with larcenous intent aren’t going to be put off by barrier that shifts slower than a pensioner’s stairlift.

When you’re trying to protect 100 acres that can be accessed really at any point within a six-mile radius, a bit of metal isn’t going to cut it.

So what are they for if they’re not enough of a security measure? I’ll tell you. I’ve got a theory on this. They’re to annoy visitors as much as possible.

In what other leisure industry – and let’s not forget that we’re supposed to play golf because we enjoy it – would you make it a massive ball-ache to get in and even tougher to get out?

My memory has been destroyed by the fruits of 1,000 post-round pints but even if I was in Mensa I’d struggle to remember some of the codes you have to punch into the gate when you want to leave.

Of course, most of us have forgotten there was ever a code at all. You end up parked at the gate, engine running, desperately trying to wave someone down to get the digits you need to escape.

Once – and that was quite enough – I was the only car remaining. It was like something out of Scott of the Antarctic. All in aid of a series of otherwise useless numbers.  

Look, you win. I promise not to come back. Now, please, JUST LET ME OUT.

Now have your say

What do you think of the Angry Club Golfer’s latest moan about golf club gates and golf club security in general? Is it all a fuss about nothing, or have you been caught stranded in a club for the sake of a code? Let us know with a comment on X.

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