Golf’s soaring popularity has created waiting lists at private clubs all across the country. But can you imagine shifting through several thousand applications a month?
That’s the volume Epic Golf Club has been experiencing, according to CEO and founder Noah Dipasquale.
Exactly where is this club? Well, everywhere, so to speak.
Epic Golf Club is modeled after a “golfing society” with a slight twist. It requires you to belong to at least one private golf club in order to get considered for this exclusive membership. If accepted — and that’s a big if — members have the opportunity to play some of the nation’s best private clubs and experiences public golfer hacks dream about.
“As much as we want to be inclusive, it’s very important that we follow the norms of the country club culture,” Dipasquale says of the elite club.
There are now 900 plus members to the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Epic Golf Club and many more knocking at the door to become a part of the unique access to world-renowned private clubs. Prospects can be interviewed as many as five different times before being considered for membership.
Epic Golf Club now has members in 43 states and 13 countries, with access to a network of more than 750 of the world’s best golf clubs. “The private club landscape operates a little bit differently in Europe so we’re not in a huge rush to grow there,” Dipasquale says.
Founded in 2018, Epic Golf Club has outgrown three different offices and is now in a state-of-the-art, 10,000-square-foot facility with a Trackman, expansive putting green and bar, housing 21 employees, seven of which are exclusively dedicated to vetting potential members.
“One of the biggest heavy lifting pieces is our membership committee,” Dipasquale says. “With us getting roughly 2,000 applications every single month, and us only taking 20 new members every month, it’s quite an exercise to go through the paperwork to screen the people, to set up the meetings and everything that goes into it.
“We’ve dubbed it the Epic Clubhouse,” he added of the new office complex. “And so while there is a lot of work conducted there one of the things that we love is when our members are coming to Scottsdale to play golf they can swing in either pre-round or post-round and join us for a drink or get warmed up on the Trackman and just meet the team.”
Much of the operating process of the private firm is secret, including the member fee and dues – of which Dipasquale says are equivalent to a high-end national membership. There is also an undisclosed cap on members from each club and a geography cap, and members aren’t permitted to make public where the club has playing privileges.
“There are a couple reasons we keep most things private,” Dipasquale says. “We just don’t want people necessarily knowing what we do. It’s kind of like, ‘how much money do you make?’ It’s good to know that somebody’s successful or not successful, but most people don’t wear their salaries on their on sleeve. And another reason is it would be unfair to the clubs in which we operate. So if people saw, for example, that you could play Augusta by joining Epic for X amount of money it would just create a huge stir. The Augusta members would be upset; everybody would be trying to get in. So we want people that are caring.”
For the record, Augusta is not one of the clubs Epic Golf Club members have played.
Dipasquale says there were just 80 members that first year, but now with such demand he and his team have ramped up the vetting process for potential members.
“Obviously golf is the foundation of it, but for me another key component is we’re not looking for the guy or the girl that just wants to go play Augusta or Pine Valley,” he said. “For us it’s somebody that wants to be part of a group that wants to give back as much as they take, that cares about the network and that cares about the community. If you don’t have much to give back to the scenario and you’re just a taker then you’re not going to be a good fit, and we’re probably not going to accept you.”
The 47-year-old Dipasquale, who didn’t start playing golf until 11 years ago, recalls coming up with the company name over a glass of wine with some golfing buddies.
“We were talking about a trip that we took, and I don’t remember who actually said this phrase, but it was like, ‘man, that was such an epic trip.’ And it just stuck in my head. And as we started growing this I thought there was nothing else that describes this better of what my vision was going to be. It was humble beginnings, but now we do things that literally most of the people in the world have no chance of ever doing. And we do it with ease, which we’re super proud of.”
Another point of pride is the club’s non-profit Epic Foundation that is on pace to donate a total of $500,000 equally to three charities — Folds of Honor, HopeKids and Youth on Course.
“Most of our members have been very generous with the foundation and it is part of our mission statement,” Dipasquale says. “It’s not just lip service, but something that we drive home. We want to leave the communities that we go to better than when we found them. My goal is to ultimately get to a million dollars for each charity in the next few years.”
In honoring golf announcer Jim Nantz, Epic Golf Club bills itself as “A Membership Like No Other.”
“Everything’s been a surprise,” Dipasquale says about the Epic Golf Club journey so far. “At first I thought this was going to be a hobby and I was optimistic that it would catch on. Hey, we have a great golf offering and we were able to really find a way to amplify the word and get the right people very quickly, which helped us grow.”