No limitations, no restrictions, no fees.
That’s music to the ears of many traveling golfers who are looking for access and a hassle-free network of high-end clubs across the United States.
Icon Golf–celebrating its tenth anniversary under the umbrella of Texas-based ownership and management company Escalante Golf–provides such luxury golfing experiences at the firm’s more than two dozen clubs across the country.
Some of the A-list courses Icon Golf membership provides access to include Black Diamond Ranch in Florida, Pumpkin Ridge in Oregon and Dove Mountain in Arizona.
Icon Golf founder Jeff Goodsell, 50, was part of a national golf membership during his early years of traveling and wasn’t a fan of its “cookie cutter” approach and restrictive access.
“I was dead set on creating something different,” he says of the launch of Icon Golf in 2014 that allows for unlimited network access to golf and beyond. “My previous experience was the golf was so limited in nature and you would show up, change your shoes in the parking lot, go play golf and then you’d change your shoes and drive off. There was nothing experiential about it, which I think is one of the coolest things about this game; it’s the experiences and the friendships and the stories that can happen over a four-hour round of golf.
“So that was one of my driving forces in creating Icon — I wanted it to be experiential, I wanted it to be relational, I wanted it to be where I poured myself into the people and got to know them.”
The concept was founded a decade ago when the former Pepperdine University baseball player and biology pre-med grad Goodsell left his position as a regional manager at Enterprise Rent-A-Car to begin sharing his love of golf with what are now around 700 Icon Golf members.
Goodsell says about 70 percent of the Icon Golf members already belong to Escalante Golf clubs across the United States and want to experience the firm’s other offerings, while 30 percent are comprised of, “random people from around the world.”
There is a non-refundable initiation fee of $20,000 to join Icon Golf, with annual dues of $5,000.
“There are benefits, or I like to call them buckets of privileges, that go beyond the ability to play the clubs in our portfolio that are different than any other multi-club memberships out there,” Goodsell says. “When members visit the clubs in our portfolio they can use the clubs just as our full golf members do in terms of using all the amenities.”
Along the 10-year journey, pro golfer Paul Stankowski and singer Kenny G have become Icon Golf ambassadors and embraced the company motto: “Life Is A Collection of Experiences.”
“For the first five years of this thing, Paul was kind of my right hand man,” Goodsell said of the two-time PGA Tour winner. “He went on all the trips with me, loved spending time with our members, helping them with their swings, helping them with their bunker games, telling them stories from the Tour about Tiger and Freddy Couples. He’s so good at loving on people and was a huge blessing.”
While the reciprocal portfolio of great golf clubs that include dining, social events and tournaments is key to many signing on, it’s just a piece of what Icon Golf stands for and can offer its expanding membership, according to Goodsell. There is an annual calendar of global, five-star luxury travel opportunities that members can sign up for as “a la carte options” for their membership.
“That has probably become the heartbeat of our membership – the fellowship and the camaraderie of bringing people together,” Goodsell says. “I keep telling people we are just as much a luxury lifestyle entity as we are a golf membership. So, if you love travel, you love meeting new people, chances are you’re going to love what this membership has to offer. We’ve had a lot of folks join where maybe the spouse doesn’t play golf and I tell them the same thing, ‘My goal, my ambition, is that the non-golfers love Icon Golf as much as the golfers do.”’
Goodsell recalls a host of memorable experiences a 2024 New Zealand trip produced among the intimate 16-person group that attended.
“It was wild, and by far the most extravagant trip we’ve ever done,” he says. “It was well into the six figures (cost) for everybody who attended. I mean everything was first class, from the accommodations to the golf to the dinners to the private flights and helicopters. It was literally the best of the best. You can imagine a trip that long we had some pretty extensive world travelers, but I think it was the longest trip that anybody on that trip had ever done.”
With a three-week outing on tap, Goodsell felt it would be a good idea to give the group some free time along the way, to peel off, relax and do their own thing.
He received the shock of his life.
“We got going on the trip and the next thing you know we went 21 straight days with all 16 of us having dinner together,” Goodsell said. “Nobody wanted to break off and do their own thing because we were all having so much fun.
“You had people laughing, you had people crying, you had people sharing stories about their cancer battle, you had people talking about raising grandkids and kids, and struggles with that. I mean, it was just sheer life, it was genuine, it was authentic. And as the founder of Icon Golf that’s probably the most fun for me to see. Every trip is a really cool melting pot of members.”
That includes a 75-year woman at one of the Escalante Golf clubs in Arizona that is twice a widow.
“She literally goes on every trip we do. I think at this point she’s been on like 40 of them,” Goodsell says. “She’s always the first one to sign up too, but we’ve made it so we easy for her. The cool thing about those trips from a member’s perspective is it’s kind of like out-of-sight out-of-mind. There’s no planning that they have to do. It’s kind of one-stop shop luxury vacations — just click a button on the website to register for whatever trips you want to be a part of and sit back and relax.”
Icon Golf has already posted trips on its website for members as far out as October 2026, with a potential 21-day excursion to Australia in the works for 2028.
“Aside from the luxury and the ease that we make it for people to get out and see the world, it’s the friendships and the camaraderie that have come to define us,” Goodsell says.