A short guide to being a patron of Strawgrass — on devices, applause, the green chair, refreshment, and the small courtesies that make the grounds what they are.
You are not a spectator. You are not a fan, a guest, or — the elder Mr. Goff’s least favourite word — a crowd. At Strawgrass you are a Patron, and the distinction is the whole of our hospitality. A patron is one whose presence honours the grounds, and whom the grounds are honoured to receive in turn. We ask only that you carry the title as it was intended: lightly on the shoulders, and seriously in the heart.
The estate receives patrons at 709 Hornet Lane. The drive is gravel and unhurried; take it at the pace it asks for. Leave your vehicle where directed, your worries in it, and proceed on foot. The grounds are entered, never merely visited.
Mobile telephones are silenced upon arrival and kept from view. They may not be raised, consulted, or — under any circumstance the General Manager can presently imagine — answered upon the fourteenth tee, where The Dam asks for a silence we are unwilling to sell. A patron who must place a call may do so at the gravel turnaround, beyond earshot of the lake. Photography is welcomed everywhere the moment deserves it, and nowhere it would interrupt a stroke.
You are welcome to set a folding chair at any vantage you favour, and to leave it there. It will not be moved, claimed, or sat in by another while you walk the holes — a custom kept not by the staff but by the patrons themselves, and one that has never once required enforcing. Return whenever you like. The chair, and the view, will be where you left them.
One walks at Strawgrass. One does not run — not for a better view, not for the last barbecue plate, not for shelter from a passing shower; the prairie’s showers are brief, and being caught in one is half the charm. Yield to a line of play. Cross a fairway only between groups, and only with the General Manager’s unspoken but keenly felt approval.
Applause is the patron’s native language, spoken generously and without favour: a fine shot is a fine shot, whoever has struck it. We do not heckle. We do not root against. During the stroke the grounds fall silent, and that silence is the most flattering thing a patron can offer. The roar permitted at the fourteenth — when a ball holds the green above the water — is the single exception, and a cherished one.
Prairie formal: a collared shirt or a proper Strawgrass tee, and footwear equal to gravel and dew. No swimwear beyond the Aquatic Center, no gymnasium wear, and nothing you would be sorry to be photographed in beside the crest. We are not unkind about it. We are simply observant.
The General Manager is addressed as Mr. Fairways, and answers, on a good day, to nearly anything said warmly. Caddies are addressed by surname and treated as the authorities they are. Should you meet the honorary starter at dawn, a nod is sufficient — he has been here longer than the lake.
The signature refreshment of the grounds is the Hornet: a jalapeño white cheddar sandwich in a green wax wrapper, named for the sting and sold at the half-way house for a dollar and fifty cents and not a penny more — a price the General Manager defends against all economic reason. Heartier appetites are kept at The Sheaf; the Caddie’s Bar pours the Prairie Fire from noon. Patrons are asked to carry their green wrappers to the bins, where they are counted, washed, and quietly reused.
Children are welcome, and are patrons in full; the title is not withheld on grounds of height. They are asked, like everyone, to honour the silence — which they often manage better than their parents. Well-mannered dogs may walk the grounds on a lead and are, by long custom, permitted onto the eighteenth green for the closing photograph and no sooner.
Bring: a folding chair, soft-soled shoes, sun, and patience. Leave behind: coolers, banners, ladders, selfie poles, glassware, and any device that rings. A patron travels light, and is remembered fondly for it.
Autographs are sought after the round and away from the green, never during play. The Pro Shop keeps the Strawgrass marks — the crest, the wheat-sheaf, the crossed clubs — and keeps them, by design, only here: what you carry home from the grounds was available nowhere else, and will be again only when you return.
To be a patron of Strawgrass is to agree, for an afternoon, that a short course on the prairie is worth treating as something rare — because the treating is what makes it so. Final authority on all matters of conduct upon the grounds rests, as ever, with the General Manager, Mr. Arnold Fairways, whose rulings are firm, occasional, and delivered with a smile.
