Links Magazine | The Best Of Golf

The defining room of any club should have an airy, high-ceiling setting, where bets are settled and unwinnable arguments debated below the names of former club champions or invitational winners memorialized on wood siding reaching into the upper reaches.

At least one sizeable flat screen television is included, tuned to the Golf Channel or some other sporting event. Please, no news channels or stock tickers—nobody should have to watch seemingly successful men sitting at a crumb-covered table watching a ticker. It tempts one to ask in fullJudge Smails condescension, “Don’t you have homes?”

A tall bar without stools guards one side of our ideal grill, serving not only lunch guests but also welcoming golfers coming off the course. Perhaps they are passing through at the turn to grab some peanuts and a soothing cocktail. Or making one last stop for a Gatorade and grape juice before heading to the first tee on a steamy July afternoon.

Either way, these wayward souls are free to stand and chat with the bartender without having to squeeze between hunched bar dwellers who unintentionally add an unseemly element that our ideal grill works hard to discourage.

Ultimately, the model grillroom is only as memorable as the golfers who gather there. The décor does not have to attain perfection, but something about the scale and tone must invite complete comfort. While Winged Foot’s grill obtains architectural nirvana, it’s the wonderful community regaling nightly in an upstairs bar that adds to those halcyon days spent in the Nebraska countryside playing at Sand Hills Golf Club.

Next: Ideal Parking Lot

Ideal Grillroom