“Are you allowed to be here?”
The last words we wanted to hear rang across the fairway. The coastal course in Maine we were playing was very private, and Chet and I were definitely not members. The filmmaker Van Neistat once said you’ll never get back the “fuck you” of your 20s, and I felt it then.
We’d been coming to this same course every Thanksgiving for half a decade. Even if we weren’t technically allowed out here, shouldn’t there be some statute of limitations for them to stop us? And in Maine, people are legally free to use any open land that isn’t otherwise posted.
Beyond that, why wouldn’t we be allowed to be here? The course was closed. Pro shop empty. The greenskeeper left the cups in for someone to play. If you squinted during late-autumn days like this, you could see Bruins hoodies and Celtics beanies dotting the fairways—the majority of whom were not part of this institution’s particularly blue-blooded membership.
To some, sneaking onto courses might sound barbarian. Criminal, even. But you’re probably not from Maine. Everywhere else I’ve ever lived, including just two hours south in Boston, golf courses stay open year round. Maine is different. Golf courses close in October and don’t open again until mid-April. If you want to play in November, you’d better move south.
Except people did play. Obsessives like us did what we had to do. And, after a while, being out there on the frozen turf became a point of pride for us. We’d slip hand warmers in our pockets and look for holes in the snow to aim at. There’s no way to do that without some light trespassing. Mostly, nobody said boo. It got to a point where we no longer thought it was wrong. We always figured it was a wink of an offseason gift from the club staff to us more salt-of-the-earth types.
Perhaps we were right—the person yelling at us that day wasn’t an employee, just some busybody. But the killjoy was correct: Technically, we weren’t allowed to be there. We waddled off the course, tails between our legs, and haven’t been back since. That was the end of our long, perhaps not-so-proud, tradition. I was about to go to law school, and after that, sneaking onto courses just didn’t seem worth it anymore.
Lawyers think of property as a bundle of different rights, which in the United States generally includes the “right to exclude.” But this is a relatively recent concept. In his seminal 1698 text Two Treatises of Government, John Locke wrote that while a person could attach rights to property, only when “there was still enough and as good left” for the rest could the right to exclude attach without limitation. Indeed, much of Northern Europe still recognizes a “right to roam,” which limits this right to exclude.
These limitations are intended to accrue benefits to the public. Famously, the Old Course on St. Andrews becomes a park on Sundays. These approaches to property acknowledge that the public’s right to land can survive private ownership.
A few years back, Malcolm Gladwell questioned the wisdom of California’s tax treatment of private golf courses. The New York Times compared the construction of Ferry Point in the Bronx to “throwing $97 million down 18 holes.” Normies hate our sport. And sure, they don’t get it—but you can see their point.
By design, golf courses take up big plots of land, as beautiful and scenic as possible. If these plots become permanent enclaves of the upper class, excluding the rest of us, it makes sense that the public will grow to hate them. Golf clubs should be able to make the most out of their land, but the right to exclude? My experience growing up in Maine makes me not so sure.
Look, I’m not a communist. This is America. But each course is still a piece of the continent, a part of the main. It seems to me that when clubs that own their land aren’t using their courses, they should be a little more open.
Out on the road recently, I saw a sign for Sable Oaks, an old course that Chet and I used to play (as paying customers, thank you very much). Just before the pandemic, developers bought it and shut it down to build condos. But they never began construction. All that is left now is a course run fallow. A blighted hole where my memories used to be.
If the course had been more directly integrated with the community year round, would its future have been different? Might courses develop greater resiliency by being more open to the public?
In Scotland, some of the greatest clubs in the world are the birthright of the people, not just the wealthy. The Old Course is old for a reason.
Aaron J. Brogan has been a member of the Broken Tee Society since 2024.
