All You Need: Clubs ... and Cash

It attracts such captains of industry as Ace Greenberg, Steve Ross, Ira Rennert, Howard W. Lutnick, and Lyor Cohen as members. And the architect Roger Ferris designed the $15 million modern clubhouse with art by Richard Prince, which is opening its French restaurant to members on weekends.

But the new Bridge Golf Club in Bridgehampton, New York, doesn't see itself as another stuffy redoubt of the rich and powerful. (Even if it is in the Hamptons, the string of Long Island beach towns that have become the summer playground for the rich and powerful.)

Unlike the Maidstone Club in East Hampton--established in 1894--at the Bridge, your wallet and maverick spirit means more than your last name and arrival date in the Hamptons.

"No rules is the spirit here," says Ferris, who also designed the trading floors at hedge fund SAC Capital, Morgan Stanley and AIG and homes for Steve Cohen and Wilbur Ross. "You can wear Versace shorts and cutoff blue jeans on the golf course."

Well, there is one rule. To eat there you have to join the club, which requires you to pony up a $750,000 initiation fee and $20,000 in annual dues.

And you have to pass muster with owner Robert Rubin, a former commodities trader, who has a heavy hand in the member approval process. So far, Bridge Golf says it has about 125 members and is looking for another 25 or so.

But the new club faces some new competition for those well-heeled duffers: The Sebonack golf club in Southampton is also drawing Wall Street heavy hitters.

Sebonack has 10 founding member who paid $1.5 million each to join, including Stanley Druckenmiller, chariman of Duquesne Capital Management and Richard Santulli, chief executive of NetJets Inc.

And some of them prefer the Sebonack course to the Bridge, which they say is hilly and hard to manuever around without a cart. The Bridge is on the site of the old Bridgehampton Motor Racing Circuit and features views of Sag Harbor, a historic whaling village.

Sebonack is owned by Michael Pascucci, who also owns TV-55, and it costs about the same as the Bridge Golf Club.

Both, by the way, are in good company--within a couple of strokes of two of the country's most acclaimed courses, the National Golf Links and Shinnecock Hills.

by Deborah Schoeneman

Condé Nast Portfolio contributor Deborah Schoeneman, who is also editor in chief of Hampton Style, reports on executives in the Hamptons.

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