We asked why so many working women aren’t joining golf clubs in the first place and got Editor Jane Carter thinking about her own decision. She swapped a full membership for a points-based scheme a while back, and has never regretted it. Here’s why, and a question clubs might want to ask themselves too.

I was a die-hard membership golfer for years. Full membership, one club, the whole thing- competitions, the social side, matches. So when I tell people I’ve swapped to a points-based scheme, the reaction is usually the same: a slight pause, like I’ve admitted to something.

I haven’t. It’s the right choice for where I am in my life right now.

Why I actually made the switch

Here’s the honest version. Running two golf businesses doesn’t leave me a predictable week. Some weeks I can play twice. Some weeks not at all. A full membership, however good the value looks on paper, only works if your life turns up in a regular shape to use it- and mine doesn’t. Points-based membership means I’m not paying for a version of my week that doesn’t exist.

What I do miss

Do I miss competitions? Sometimes, yes. There’s a specific kind of connection that comes from a club’s competitive calendar- the same faces, the same rivalries, the running joke about who always wins. I’m not going to pretend that doesn’t have value, because it does.

What I didn’t expect to gain

But here’s what surprised me: I haven’t lost the people, I’ve just found them differently. I have a small group of friends I play with regularly now- not because a fixture list put us together, but because we chose each other. And through work, I’m playing more courses than I ever did as a one-club member.

Different layouts, different clubhouses, different conversations. It’s given me more variety in twelve months than the previous several years combined.

That’s the bit that surprised me most. I expected points membership to feel like a step down from “proper” membership. It doesn’t. It feels like a different shape of golf, built around the life I actually have rather than the one a membership category assumes.

Why clubs need to look at this properly

I understand completely why working women are reluctant to make this switch. There’s a status attached to full membership – a sense that it’s what a “serious” golfer does, and that anything else is a compromise you make when you can’t manage the real thing. I don’t think that’s true, but I understand why it feels true.

But I don’t think women’s sections, or clubs more broadly, have properly got to grips with why so many working women aren’t joining in the first place, never mind why some of us end up leaving. It’s rarely just about the money. It’s about whether the structure was ever built for how we actually live and too many clubs are still assuming a working pattern that stopped being typical years ago. That’s not a side issue for clubs to get round to eventually. If they want more working women in the game, it needs to be looked at properly, not patched over with one flexible category that still assumes you’re free on a Saturday

The rise of working women’s societies

This is exactly where I think working women’s societies have real potential. Golf built around people who understand the pull of work, the unpredictable week, the guilt of an unused membership, without needing a club structure to validate it. I’d like to see more of them, and I’d like to see clubs paying attention to why they’re forming in the first place, rather than treating them as competition to see off.

My Sunday afternoon

My favourite time for playing is now Sunday afternoons if I can persuade my ‘group’. The weekend’s busy part is done, the chores are out of the way, and I’ve got a window before the week ahead properly starts. It’s become my reflective time, the closest thing I have to a pause button. That wouldn’t have been possible if I were still trying to justify a Saturday-morning competition slot against everything else pulling at that time.

My advice, for what it’s worth

If you’re a working woman weighing this up, don’t treat it as a downgrade. Look at what you actually want from your golf. The competitive edge, the social side, the variety, or the value and work out which structure gives you the most of that, rather than which one everyone assumes you should want.

Want to read more: Working Women and Golf Membership: Are They Right For Each Other?