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SARATOGA SINGS: OBC’s impeccably understated clubhouse and course suggest a timeless elegance and devotion to service.
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lot of marbles in front of people.” Although Old Baldy currently sits about 85 shy of its 250-member cap, there’s no plan to reduce the number of “marbles,” lower the surprisingly affordable initiation, or to mass-market the club. “Our best source for new members,” he says in-between hellos to members and guests arriving for breakfast in the clubhouse, “is current members.” If not staying with their hosts, prospective members can bed down in one of Old Baldy’s flawlessly maintained suites and cottages, all of which offer complimentary in-room breakfast service from an elaborate menu. Your pancakes arrive with a newspaper and the names of every member and guest on property. “You want to know who’s here, who you can expect to see. It’s a big family,” Gallagher explains. “Family” clearly means something at Old Baldy, which is why the club has instituted a Legacy Membership, which allows an Equity Member to transfer his or her membership to a child or grandchild after five years of membership. The club waives the heir’s initiation fee and, so long as he or she maintains the membership in good standing, the original member can enjoy all the privileges at the club without paying any dues or assessments. While novel, Old Baldy’s strategy towards member retention and recruitment seems a bit surprising considering the desperate financial straits in which the club found itself just six years ago. “Let’s just say it wasn’t being run like a handson business,” Gallagher explains. “About 10 years after Mr. Storer died, we had what I call a ‘lost generation.’ We had a lot of billionaire members but we were C.O.D. for everything, overpaying staff, and on the verge of being bought. But
TREE LUGGERS: Original members moved the course’s pines from Old Baldy itself.
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toga, Wyo., Old Baldy Club not only takes its name from a nearby mountain. It apparently also took hundreds of spruces from its base to line the fairways of the golf course during construction. “Can you imagine the Forest Service allowing that today?” asks Tom Rodeno, a Castle Rock resident who became a member five years ago and bought a home on the course. “The guys who built this place had some serious influence.” They did. And many current members still do. A post-cookout mini-tour by the avuncular Club President Victor Gallagher produces the names of no fewer than a dozen Fortune 500 executives who belong to the club and own homes on property. The roster also includes prominent attorneys, doctors and 30 heirs of original members. All the homes, while rich in curb appeal, tend to understate their owners’ wealth. Discreet comfort trumps conspicuous consumption, although Saratoga’s Shively Field does tend to fill with private planes and jets on the weekends. “We strive to draw from as diverse a geographic area as possible,” says Gallagher, a native Indianan who followed his father into the oil-drilling business and, eventually, to Old Baldy. “We have people from Southern California, St. Louis, Houston, Chicago, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana…you name it. Geographic diversity is one of the five things we look for when vetting members.” And the other four? “Love of the game of golf. Love of fly-fishing. Enjoyment of the outdoors in general. And they have to be… congenial. That was the vision of George Storer, and we’ve held fast to that. Anyone who’s here is here for a reason. We assume everyone here has been vetted to a degree that warrants an invitation.” That membership-by-invitation, Gallagher admits, “is a tough nut to crack. It throws a
we love the club so much, we wouldn’t even consider an offer.” Thanks to Gallagher and fellow board member Scott Tibbs—both successful small business owners with a sharp-penciled approach towards the bottom line—as well as a number of other progressive thinkers, Old Baldy passed around the hat and slowly went from “busted to viable,” according to Gallagher. “The money wasn’t the hard part; it was the attitude. It happened through attrition and getting a buy-in from people that we could run the club differently. We appealed to their sense of pride, that they were members for a reason.” Old Baldy’s altered business model eliminated most of the club’s debt and is close to covering all depreciation. That sense of pride has inspired what are known as “friends of the club”—deep-pocketed benefactors who single-handedly have paid for the construction of a fitness center, the two-mile restoration of the private fishing waters of Trout Run, and the replacement of winterkilled greens on the golf course. All the greens roll true and quick, and the course plays tougher than it once did, thanks to superintendent Trent Butler’s introduction of 35 acres of native grasses. “There was no real rough,” Butler says. “Between