Brookline Must Ask More of The Country Club As We Approach the 2022 US Open in June

The Select Board and School Committee can ask more of this "exclusive" institution that owns more than 200 acres of land used for golf for the privileged

Editorial/Opinion

When the Brookline School Committee holds an emergency meeting this Sunday, March 20, to discuss recent racist incidents at Brookline High School and in the Brookline community, discussion of the upcoming US Open at The Country Club in Brookline might be part of the conversation.

This meeting will be broadcast via Zoom and is open to all members of the public and all members of the media. The link is below:

Link to Brookline School Committee Emergency Meeting on Racism

The recent events at Brookline High School have been documented with great skill by the talented writers at the high school’s newspaper, The Sagamore:

Link to The Sagamore Coverage of Recent Racist Events

In reaction to the recent racist incidents at the high school, students organized a walkout protesting the administration’s response. The demonstration followed the circulation of a recent controversial TikTok video and took place on March 16 at 11 a.m. during D-block.

The TikTok video rapidly spread among the student body on March 15. Within the next twenty four hours, a group of students organized a school-wide walkout. On March 16 at 11 a.m., several hundreds of students gathered with teachers and staff outside the STEM wing. Student organizers spoke to the crowd demanding apologies from administrators and speaking about their experience with racism at the high school.

Freshman Jaelyn Onuoha, who shares an honors English class with the person who created the TikTok video, spoke about her experience being pulled out of her English class to speak with administrators.

“Yesterday , I was taken out of C and D-block. The day before, on Monday, when the event sparked, I was taken out of G-block,” Onuoha said. “They asked us about what consequences we felt would be equitable for the racist student in the video. We were told that that student was going through a lot and needed our support.”

At a time of a budget crisis stretching the limits of the Town of Brookline’s ability to provide services for all of its residents, including seniors, students, those with physical disabilities, and the least affluent, including the many living in affordable, government-subsidized housing, the Select Board and School Committee can summon the courage to ask for financial support from the most able entity in the the town.

Brookline’s most prominent and exclusive social institution, The Country Club, host of the upcoming 2022 US Open, which will impose large costs on the Town in terms of congestion and environmental impact, has few members who are neither white nor Christian.

Requiring, as I understand it, at least seven personal — not professional — references from current members for a membership application for The Country Club to even be considered, the result is a de facto policy of perpetuating a membership that is almost entirely a private school, white, Christian demographic (which is largely Protestant rather than Catholic, despite the Boston area’s large Catholic population).

To be clear, as a “private club,” The Country Club is within its legal rights to use essentially whatever membership criteria it wants, including policies that would be illegal under federal law if The Country Club were a government institution or a “place of public accommodation."

See, e.g., the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution and MA Attorney General Maura Healey’s advisory on places of public accommodation.

In an infamous incident regarding membership, The Country Club rejected the application of the first Black Governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, and his wife, Diane Patrick, as detailed in Governor Patrick’s memoir, A Reason to Believe.

Governor Patrick recounts:

Diane and I were invited to apply for membership in the Country Club, a venerable retreat in Brookline, Massachusetts, famous for its flawless golf course and its legacy of Brahmin members. I had visited a few times as a guest. But after garnering more “seconders” or endorsements, than any applicant in the history of the club, we learned we were blackballed. (pp 175-176).

It is generally understood that if you are not “the right type,” did not go to “the right schools”, and do not have “the right friends” — meaning at least seven current members of “TCC”, as members call it — you are not welcome.

The most likely route for non-white, non-Protestant people to “get into” The Country Club is via their employment postings:

Perhaps the highest profile, most comparable situation is that of Augusta National Golf Club, host of the prestigious Masters tournament, whose membership policies prohibited women until 2012, when Augusta admitted two prominent women as members.

And consistent with the exclusive tradition of golf in the United States, travel ticket packages to the upcoming, June 2022 event in Brookline start at more than $2,000 per person.

Yet despite The Country Club’s “exclusive” membership policies and use of massive amounts of land for wealthy, white Christians to play golf, the leadership of the Town of Brookline has rarely if ever raised the possibility of seeking some of that land, or even a financial contribution from The Country Club, for a supposedly much-needed 9th K-8 school or for any other use, including affordable housing, racial justice initiatives, and/or resources for seniors.

Short of taking land from The Country Club by eminent domain, which would be expensive, the Town of Brookline could, conceivably, consider changing the zoning laws for The Country Club’s district to uses that do not include “private golf club.”

But rather than ever considering asking The Country Club for material help, the Select Board instead aggressively went after land from Pine Manor college with the threat of eminent domain, proposed to raze acres of trees in South Brookline for a site, and tried to site a school in a location that would have displaced a preschool and had considerable, adverse environmental impacts — a proposal that included the “purchase” of several homes from frightened residents who almost certainly felt too intimidated to turn down “an offer they couldn’t refuse,” and some of whom were not proficient in English.

The Town leadership that never mentioned any consideration of seeking land or financial support from The Country Club included some of the same individuals who fired Black Brookline Firefighter Gerald Alston after his emotional reaction to hearing a colleague use the N-word, resulting in eventual agreement to an $11 million settlement.

Structured legally as a non-profit, The Country Club must file a Form 990 with the Internal Revenue Service.

The 2019 filing reveals a variety of information, such as the organization’s “mission” of providing “services” to its members, including “golf, tennis, paddle tennis, skeet shooting, pond skating, curling, fine dining, swimming and fitness”:

Reported revenues were about $20 million for the year ending in September 2019, with top salaried employees including the General Manager and Director of Golf and Fitness, each earning total compensation in excess of $450,000.

Membership apparently consists of eleven different “classes”:

With a reported 1,338 members and membership dues totaling approximately $16 million, the average annual dues per member appear to be about $12,000.

Assuming many members to be part of families of four, and assuming further that some members pay lower-than-average dues in exchange for limited usage rights, that would equate to typical, annual family membership dues of about $48,000.

According to the Brookline Assessor’s Database, The Country Club, at 191 Clyde St., sits on more than 10 million square feet of land, or about 238 acres:

A new school in Brookline could be built extremely well on about 3 acres, or a little more than 1% of The Country Club’s land.

Yet through years of contentious battles over siting of a 9th K-8 school, neither the Select Board nor the School Committee ever even considered publicly seeking a few of The Country Club’s 238 acres for a site for a new school, choosing only to focus on some “expand in place” options and three “new site” options, all of which were mired in deep controversy:

Meanwhile, the Select Board and School Committee have remained content for years to let The Country Club enjoy exclusive use of its 238 acres for golf (as well as fine dining, tennis, and skeet shooting, among various other activities), assessed at more than $70 million, for the price of its annual property taxes of about $1.2 million, or about 6% of the Club’s annual budget:

And yet, the Town continues its years-long struggle about how to divide its revenues between the Public Schools of Brookline and other departments while presenting a picture of considerable financial stress:

Unfortunately, the FY 2023 Budget reflects modest revenue growth. This revenue growth is insufficient to meet the rate of increase in the Town’s fixed costs, never mind the ability to fund new investments and enhanced services…

…Based on expenditure projections and requests from the School Department that would increase their budget by 7.89% over FY 2022, available FY 2023 revenue allocated to the School Department is short by $5.8 million. Municipal departments are also limited in the allocation of revenue, creating a shortfall of $1.2 million. [emphasis added]

For the upcoming 2022 US Open, The Country Club offered a “volunteer” package to a limited number of Brookline residents, each of whom would have to work at least 20 hours for no pay while being required to purchase a $240 “Volunteer Package”, with the “offer” stating explicitly, “Volunteers will not be paid wages or compensated in any other manner in exchange for their volunteer activities”:

The Town of Brookline website presents this “volunteer” opportunity as “Brookline Comes First”:

In addition, the Town presents the 2022 US Open as an opportunity to “celebrate Brookline’s golfing history”, complete with a photograph of a white, male, Christian golfer:

While also touting the 1999 Ryder Cup, which took place at The Country Club, the Town website fails to acknowledge that at that infamous, 1999 event in Brookline:

The behavior of both U.S. spectators and the U.S. team was criticized by both American and European media.

U.S. spectators raucously heckled and abused European players. Allegations were also made regarding cheating on the part of course marshals.

Notoriously, the U.S. team raucously invaded the 17th green after [Justin] Leonard had holed his long putt but before [José Maria] Olazábal had attempted his shorter putt.

The incident was viewed by many in both the US and Europe as appalling sportsmanship.

Veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke described the last day of the tournament as "a date that will live in infamy" in a Letter from America entitled "The arrival of the golf hooligan." [emphasis added]

A writer for The Guardian described the end of the 1999 Ryder Cup at The Country Club as a “Day of shame that refuses to die:”

Sam Torrance, the successful Ryder Cup captain in 2002, was vice-captain at Brookline. The son of a professional, Bob, he was brought up "proper" in golfing terms, loving the game for all the right reasons. To say that he was horrified by the shenanigans of that final day is to put it mildly, as he explains in his autobiography, Sam.

"It was the most disgraceful and disgusting day in the history of professional golf," says Torrance. "The spectators behaved like animals and some of the American players, most notably Tom Lehman, acted like madmen."

Nonetheless, the Town Administrator’s July 2021 presentation to the Select Board regarding the “host agreement” between the Town and the United States Golf Association (USGA) resembles a promotional brochure for the event that presents little tangible, documented benefit to the Town.

The first five pages of the presentation are the following, and include the fact that the total prizes for golfers will be $12.5 million and television coverage is expected to exceed 75 hours with more than 95 million viewers in more than 190 countries:

Under Community Benefits, the presentation includes “Community values -- racial equity and environmental sustainability.”

The irony is stunning, given not only The Country Club’s “exclusive“ membership admissions practices, but also the fact that golf courses are well known to present considerable environmental harm.

As recently as December 2021, CNN wrote:

The 30 or so golf courses in the Salt Lake County of Utah drink up around nine million gallons of water a day to stay pristine green -- that's more than 13 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Managing the turf on golf courses also means using carbon-intensive fertilizers, plenty of mowing and, in many cases, clearing forests or trees that were soaking up carbon-dioxide to make way for long tracts of fairway.

In other words, golf is a dirty sport that's wrecking the planet. [emphasis added]

According to its 2020 audited financial statements, the USGA’s total revenues were about $492 million, with 75% of that, or about $369 million, coming from the US Open:

The USGA generates approximately 75% of its revenues from the U.S. Open. These revenues arise from various sources, including broadcast rights, ticket sales, hospitality sales, concessions, and merchandise sales.

Based on the increasing global TV audience for golf, it is reasonable to guess that the USGA will earn far more than $300 million from the upcoming US Open in Brookline.

Might the Brookline Select Board and School Committee ask The USGA and The Country Club to step up and help the Town with its financial struggles in the name of racial justice, environmental justice, and support for seniors, affordable housing, and Brookline’s less affluent residents?

Not so long ago, the USGA had an incident eerily reminiscent of some of Brookline’s latest racial justice controversies:

Golfer Tiger Woods has described a jibe aimed at him by Sergio Garcia as “wrong, hurtful and inappropriate,” though the world No. 1 insists he wants to move on from their very public war of words.

Garcia apologized to Woods after making a remark about the American at a players’ dinner ahead of the European Tour’s flagship tournament – the PGA Championship at Wentworth that starts Thursday.

Asked on stage whether he would be inviting Woods round for dinner during next month’s U.S. Open Garcia replied: “We’ll be having him round every night… and serving him fried chicken.”

The USGA has also discriminated against one of its golfers, Casey Martin, with a physical disability that led eventually to the amputation of his right leg.

In ruling in favor of Martin against the PGA Tour, the United States Supreme Court wrote:

Congress intended that an entity like the PGA not only give individualized attention to the handful of requests that it might receive from talented but disabled athletes for a modification or waiver of a rule to allow them access to the competition, but also carefully weigh the purpose, as well as the letter, of the rule before determining that no accommodation would be tolerable.

And the institution of golf, its many private clubs, and the USGA have been extremely slow to stop discrimination against women and Blacks, as a Sports Illustrated article explained in detail:

Private clubs have been valued over the years. Many have helped men and women build friendships and cultivate lasting personal and professional relationships. An organization being a “private club” should not automatically invite suspicion or scorn. Many private clubs forge meaningful bonds between well-intentioned people.

Some private clubs, however, have attracted serious controversy with respect to overtly discriminating membership policies. To that end, some denied memberships on the basis of ethnicity or religion, including rejection of applicants because they are Catholic, Jewish or Muslim. [emphasis added]

To be clear and fair, The Country Club does support The Brookline Youth Fund:

While $750,000 of awards are substantial and certainly should be acknowledged and appreciated, that has occurred over approximately 23 years, averaging about $32,000 per year, or about 0.1% of The Country Club’s annual budget, which appears to be in the vicinity of $20 million.

One wonders whether The Country Club might increase the contributions of The Brookline Youth Fund substantially.

And it might also be reasonable to request that some of the USGA’s apparent $300 million (or more) revenue from the upcoming US Open in Brookline go to increase the Brookline Youth Fund considerably.

Against the backdrop of ongoing bias and discrimination and a fiscal crisis in Brookline, will the Select Board or School Committee ever ask the USGA and/or The Country Club to do something for racial justice, seniors, public education, and other community needs in the Town of Brookline?

Or might The Country Club step up, unilaterally, without being asked, to do more for Brookline’s schools, underprivileged youth (including the hundreds of students who attend the Brookline schools via the METCO program), and those who live in Brookline’s affordable housing, such as High Street Veterans, Egmont St. Veterans, the Trustman Apartments, Kilgallon House, Connolly House, McCormick House, Walnut Street Apartments, Sussman House, the Kickham Apartments, and the Col. Floyd Apartments?

If not, why?

And if not now, when?

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