Commons Day
The Club's annual round on common or public ground, in tribute to golf's birthright as a game played on land open to anyone.
Commons Day is contested on common or public ground, and the choice of venue is the whole tribute. Golf's birthright is land that belonged to everyone: the links of St Andrews and Leith, where the townsfolk held the right to play, graze, and dry their linen on the same turf; the heathland laid out over open commons; and the American municipals that carried the inheritance across the ocean, from Van Cortlandt and Bethpage to Tom Doak's aptly named CommonGround. This was land that gave the game to anyone who wanted it, and for most of golf's history that was the game.
So the Club plays its Commons Day round on exactly that kind of ground—a muni, a links, a public course with a first tee open to all comers—and pointedly not behind any gate. There is no entry fee beyond the green fee anyone else would pay, which is the tradition stating its own terms.
It is the Club's plainest argument made as an afternoon: that golf is at its best cheap, walkable, and open. See History of Public Golf in America and Walkable Public Golf Courses Ranked; for the commons of Leith and St Andrews, see Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers History.
