Just because you didn’t get to play this week at Winged Foot doesn’t mean you’ll never get to peg it at the vaunted New York club.
Be advised, though.
Like most private redoubts, Winged Foot has house rules, codes of conduct that apply to members and guests alike.
Some of these guidelines are spelled out on Winged Foot’s official website. Others are simply ingrained into club culture.
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Dress codes at Winged Foot, for example, are designed to preserve the “tradition, decorum and dignity of Club.” By that standard, set forth on the club’s website, cargo pants and workout clothes are neither decorous nor dignified. Hats in the clubhouse? No bueno. Outside the confines of the locker room, phones are also prohibited. Golf carts? Nope, this is a walking-only club.
But one of the most unusual and coolest club practices is the method by which members “book” their place on the 1st tee.
Winged Foot does not do tee times.
The process instead works like this: When everyone in your group is on the property and ready to go, you place a ball on by the tee marker on the opening hole. If there are two balls on the tee ahead of yours, that means you are the third in line.
That detail about everyone in your group being ready is important. Don’t put down a ball until they are. In that way, Winged Foot is a like a restaurant that won’t seat you at a table until everyone in your party has arrived. Don’t stress out if you are third or fourth in line. At Winged Foot, no one does a lot of waiting.
That’s because of one more club rule: Once you tee off, you’re expected to get around in four hours, max.