"Why joining an exclusive golf club isn’t as unrealistic as you might think "

Golf.com’s Paul Sullivan looks at the various options for national and international memberships and even as costs go up there are still reasonable options out there.

Yet not all national membership are five figures to join. A cheaper way in is to get the junior rate by joining before you’re 40. A decade ago, Young locked up his membership at Kinlock [sic] Golf Club, a top-rated course in Virginia, for $1,000. And when it first opened, Chechessee Creek Club, a Coore-Crenshaw design in South Carolina, offered national junior memberships for $5,000.

The greatest deal may be an international membership. One at Melbourne’s Kingston Heath, ranked 22 in the world by GOLF, will costs you $1,500 a year, and that outlay gets you member access to other top courses around the world, including Walton Heath in England; Portmarnock in Ireland; the Philadelphia Cricket Club; and Nine Bridges in South Korea.

Of course, however cheap a national membership is, you still need the extra income to get and stay there.

There is that!