Time to join the club?

Finally, there was the opportunity to join a country club, to end the search for tee times and the frustration over crab grass and goose poop on the fairways.

"I never thought I'd be able to join a golf club," I said to my wife, Joanna, who responded, "I never thought you would want to."

I grew up playing muni golf. She grew up around kids who were orphaned because their parents belonged to country clubs and spent too many weekends playing golf and too much time playing cards and whatever else they did after golf.

In those days, the club could be the center of a community, where you dined, where you wined, where you got married and sometimes even buried.

Almost always, the country club had the best golf course. That was before the advent of resort golf, in our case, places like McCormick Woods, Harbour Pointe and Trophy Lake, where the golf is country-club good.

It was 1987 when I joined Wing Point on Bainbridge Island. The stock - you buy a part interest in the place - and initiation fee totaled $900. Dues were $75 a month.

For that, my family had use of the nine-hole golf course, the pool and two tennis courts. It made sense to me, who played golf even if the rest of them didn't.

I probably could get $15,000 for my membership now. A good investment, you say? Perhaps. Besides the monthly dues, which now are $200, there is a monthly restaurant charge of $25 whether you use it or not, and over the years a $3,000 assessment to build a second nine, $600 to improve the 13th hole, $500 to improve the kitchen, and so on.

Right now, we're trying to build a driving range, which means another assessment. And then when you sell your membership, the club often takes a third of its value in a so-called transfer fee to bolster its coffers.

The price of memberships often fluctuates with the real-estate market. Memberships at Sand Point and Inglewood in Kenmore are valued at about $40,000. But location isn't everything.

The new Snoqualmie Ridge course, designed by Jack Nicklaus, is selling memberships for $57,500 despite being half way up the mountain.

Joining a country club isn't about making a good investment. It is about not having to have a tee time in order to play, about the camaraderie that develops with playing with the same people, about the annual member-guest tournament, about joining the green committee if you don't like the way the course is maintained.

I suppose it is about status, but I'm not sure anyone I know cares that I belong to Wing Point. In fact, I'm sure they'd be more impressed if I told them I could play Willows Run one week and Vicwood the next. Which I could, if I didn't belong to a club.

Or that I bought a yearly card so I could get reduced rates at Trophy Lake and the new Washington National.

Of course, there is old-money status associated with belonging to Broadmoor or Seattle golf clubs. And a new kind of prestige that would come with being a member at Sahalee, where Tiger Woods tried but didn't win a major.

These days, clubs are more about convenience. And service.

The good public-fee courses are often a ways out of town. It can take an hour or more to drive to Trophy Lake or Vicwood, or even Kayak Point.

Sand Point Country Club is a couple of Tiger tee shots from the University of Washington. Despite memberships selling for $40,000 and monthly dues of nearly $300, it has a waiting list for prospective members.

"We've got 215 kids on our swim team," said Jack Kirkpatrick, the manager of Sand Point. "We are a full-service, family-oriented club that is convenient to the city. We're doing very, very well."

Kirkpatrick said Sand Point's membership is getting younger as the Baby Boomers get older.

"Five years ago, more than half or our membership was over 65," he said. "Now half are under 60; and we've got a heck of a lot of members in their 40s and 50s, many of whom have children."

Business is also booming at Glendale in Bellevue.

"We're right in the middle of Bellevue," said Tom Frets, the club manager. "People drive for hours, spend $60 to play golf four or five times a month and wonder why they don't belong here.

"The new for-profit courses are good, but they don't spend the kind of money we do on maintaining the course. The experience here is special."

Trophy Lake, for example, wants to give you a "country-club experience" without the country-club dues. But does it?

"We have a familiarity in our service, a specialization, you don't get at a resort course," Sand Point's Kirkpatrick said. "We're like family."

Members at a country club pay monthly dues in December even though they might not play a round of golf, or even be in the Northwest, then.

They pay for meals that they sometimes don't eat.

They pay assessments for new clubhouses and irrigation systems. In my case, our club had to endure the expenses that come from being sued by the neighbors.

On the other hand, club members can stop by after work and play four holes. They can chat with the pro about their games, and even get a quick five-minute fix. They can practice for hours if they want.

Country clubs aren't a thing of the past. In fact, with a strong economy, they give the service and convenience golfers want and apparently will pay for.