Member of multiple clubs?

I am a member of 2 clubs for the past 3 years. I joined the second club because their drainage is far superior to my own club and have 18 holes open for most of the winter. They also have a substantial discount on the membership fees for anybody joining as a second club.

The downside is that it is a 50-55 drive.
I might play it a dozen times over the winter but only once every 4-6 weeks for the rest of the year

Home club is 10mins from where I live, 2nd club is 5mins from my office, circa 50km away. 2nd club has very reasonable distance membership and is generally drier through out the winter.

When the days get shorter, I like the option of having the commute done and playing 9 before work, midweek, or playing 9 at 3/4/5pm in the evening and then tipping home.

yes this sounds…. Well not good! Your 2 clubs should be merged on your golf Ireland record as home and away clubs and thus giving you only one record.

Sounds to me like above is cheering that he has 2 handicaps

I never said anything about 2 handicaps - I only have 1 HC and yes, one is registered as home and one is away club…but I still have 2 separate GUI cards/numbers. When signing in for members comps I have to use whichever GUI number is affiliated with that club…is that not normal?

I am a member of 2 clubs and I only have 1 number now (that I am aware of).

Back in 2013/4 when I joined the second club, they did give me a second number initially but afaik they shouldn't have. I then got them to merge the records properly and I only ever used my home number. I was able to use both numbers but it just pointed in 1 direction, so it effectively didn't matter which number I used.

It was pre whs, so not sure what it protocol now. I did leave second club for a couple of years and rejoined last year. I didn't get a new number this time so I'm not even sure it there is one applied to me or how I could check

When you're setting up a new member on the GI system, it will prompt you with a list of GI members of the same name. It's easy if you know what the existing club is, so you can just select that Joe Bloggs and his record will be merged into the new home club.

It's seamless and easy. The problem is what we're dealing with here where a dual member is using two numbers.

The name matching isn't reliable in the handful of times I've done this. I always needed the old number to get it working. Maybe it's changed recently, though. The regional handicap advisor can check if you can't get a number from the member and the old club.

If you want to check for other numbers in the system that you may have been assigned historically. The regional handicap handicap advisor should be able to run this query for you, too. If there is an "orphaned" number with scores, it's essentially lost anyway. The historical records for different numbers needed to be "chained" together each time you add/change clubs. There's no option to merge the orphaned records yet.

Otherwise, you have to manually enter orphaned scores. Tbf if they're more than 1 year since the latest scorecard and outside the last 20, there's no impact to the handicap. You may also encounter obsolete course ratings/slope on the old stuff, which makes it even more of a headache.

Would you know if there's any rules or guidance on which club should be a person's home club? I.e if you play substantially more of your golf in one club, should that be your "home" by default?

Quite a few members of my club are members of links clubs nearby, and they generally play that a bit over winter.

It has lead to a new rule being brought in our club that you can't win a major unless it's your home course… guys were moving their handicap to the other club to escape the monitoring of the HC Sec. I know that the Away Club HC Sec can write to the Home Club HC Sec to recommend a cut… but in one instance, the player in question was the HC Sec of the other club... :) you couldn't make up some of the stuff that goes on in our place.

There is guidance in one of the GI documents. Essentially it's the club you play the most golf at or live closest to.

When you think about it. You would want handicaps managed by the club that knows the members better.

Then you've got clubs pulling rank. I had a mate who was told he'd lose his full membership with the away club if he didn't make them his home club. He agreed to change this because he'd only be a country member and couldn't play majors. Fwiw he played about 40% of his rounds at that club and lived 30 mins away.

Yes, there's now a rule that it's your nearest club to home and where you play the most golf. Used to be the member's choice, but now it's a rule afaik.

as above, home club is where you play most of your golf over a general year. it should not be based on a snapshot of time, eg winter.

you cannot or should not just decide to appoint a club as home for any other reason. so if they were moving it to escape monitoring, the 2 clubs should liaise with each other and between them determine which is the true home club

a club equally cannot or should not make you choose their club as your home club just so you can win a major. you are either a member or you are not. that is extremely bad form by club and should be reported to GI IMO.

also, if you are a member of 2 clubs, you will only be paying golf ireland sub through 1 of your memberships. this should be your home club

I've seen a guy hounded out of his original home club because the hcap sec had a vendetta against him for winning the OOM. It was actually so blatant. Chap couldn't come within an asses roar of what he was cut to, but the hcap sec kept after him, so each time he got back close to where he could play to, he was cut again. He joined another club, set that as his home club, but that didn't stop your man. He hounded the other club to cut the guy too. To be fair to their hcap sec, he said he couldn't justify a cut so wouldn't do it.

In the end though, the new rule came in and he didn't want to put the new club in that position, so he resigned from the original one. After paying his sub too.

Court cases! 🤯

I mean if you feel hard done by a cut you can appeal and the club have to form an appeals committee

then if they uphold the cut you can further appeal to Golf Ireland

but court!!!! wow