26 September 2026 · 7 min read
Remote golf membership: what it is, what it costs and why it is rare in Switzerland
The term comes from Germany and describes a membership without a home course. Few Swiss clubs offer one, and there is a reason for that.
A remote membership is a club membership for people who live far away: you get a licence and a handicap, pay a reduced annual fee and either do not play the home course at all or pay a green fee for it. In Germany it is a product in its own right with its own providers. In Switzerland few clubs run the category, and anyone searching for it usually ends up with something else.
What a remote membership actually is
The core is always the same: a club takes you on as a member, keeps your licence and your handicap, charges you less than a full member and in return gives you no playing rights, or limited ones, on its own course. If you want to play the home course you pay a green fee like a guest, often a reduced one.
For the club it is business with little effort; for the member it is a cheap licence with club affiliation. That affiliation is the difference from a licence through a public golf organisation: at courses that distinguish between club members and clubless players, you count as a club member.
Why it hardly exists in Switzerland
Because the gap a remote membership fills is already filled twice here. The ASGI and the Migros GolfCard keep the licence and handicap of 47,177 people, 43 per cent of all Swiss cards, and they cost less than any club fee. If you do not need a home course, you take one of those two cards.
The term accordingly appears rarely on Swiss club pages, and where it does, it is a demarcation. Golf Club Klosters, for instance, notes expressly of one of its cheaper categories that it is not a remote membership (golf-klosters.ch). That is no accident: clubs want members who turn up.
What exists instead
| Model | Example | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Weekday membership | Golfclub Erlen, CHF 2,300 a year | playing rights Monday to Friday, green fee at weekends |
| Passive membership | Golf Club Klosters, CHF 500 plus CHF 50 club fee | affiliation and two rounds of 18 holes |
| Public golf organisation | Migros GolfCard CHF 300, ASGI by season | licence and handicap, no home course |
The figures come from the clubs' own pages as at 26 September 2026 (Erlen, Klosters) and from Migros GolfCard and the ASGI. A passive membership, incidentally, requires you to have been active before; it is a pause, not a way in.
The calculation that makes the difference
A remote membership only becomes interesting because of one item: the surcharge some courses charge clubless players. At Golfclub Wylihof the same weekday round is CHF 120 for a member of another club and CHF 180 through the ASGI or the Migros GolfCard (golfclub.ch). That is CHF 60 a round.
Play twenty rounds a year at courses like that and being clubless costs CHF 1,200 more. From that number a cheap club membership, remote or not, is arithmetically ahead. Play at public facilities such as the Migros golf parks, where everybody pays the same tariff, and the card saves you money and no club is needed.
The foreign variant
Some Swiss players take a membership in Germany or Austria, because providers there sell exactly this product. It works, but it has two catches. First, your handicap is then kept by a foreign federation, which can have consequences for Swiss tournaments and for the Swiss Golf Card. Second, some Swiss courses bill such a membership expressly as clubless: Wylihof lists the category as “ASGI, Migros, clubless abroad” in one line.
The price advantage then disappears exactly where it was meant to apply. Anyone taking that route settles in advance with the course they play most often how they will be classified.
Who is better off with what
Few rounds, different courses: the Migros GolfCard or the ASGI. No entry fee, no commitment, and no surcharge at more than half of Swiss courses.
Many rounds at club courses: a cheap club category, such as a weekday membership. It costs more than a card and saves on every green fee.
A season off: a passive membership at your own club, where one exists. It keeps the affiliation and costs a fraction.
Which of the three licence forms pays off for you is set out in ASGI, Migros GolfCard or a club. And what a licence is at all is in The golf licence in Switzerland.
The questions to ask a club
Anyone looking for a cheap category learns more in five minutes on the phone than from any website. Four questions decide it: how high is the annual fee, and is the Swiss Golf Card included or does CHF 80 come on top? Is there an entry fee, and is it refunded in full or in part if you leave? What playing rights come with the category, all days, weekdays only, or none? And how are you classified at other courses, as a club member or as clubless?
The last question is the most important and the one nobody thinks of. It decides whether you pay CHF 120 or CHF 180 at a course like Wylihof, and therefore involves more money than the whole fee difference between two categories.
What a membership otherwise gives you
Beyond the green fee there are three things a card cannot deliver. First tee times: on a Saturday morning in June a member gets one and a guest often does not. Second club tournaments and teams, which are open to members only and are for many people the actual reason to join a club at all. Third a home course you know so well that you play it without a card, which helps a handicap more than any lesson.
If you need none of that, you need no membership. If you want all of it, the cheapest version is rarely a remote membership but a weekday or young-adult category at the club you play anyway.
A worked example over three years
Take twenty rounds a year, twelve of them at club courses with a surcharge and eight at public facilities. With the Migros GolfCard you pay CHF 300 in fees, twelve times CHF 180 and eight times CHF 90, CHF 3,180 in all. With a weekday membership at CHF 2,300 you play those twelve rounds free on your home course and the other eight at CHF 90, CHF 3,020 in all, plus the entry fee once.
So the two routes sit close together, and the entry fee tips the calculation for years. Only at considerably more rounds, or at a club without an entry fee, does the picture change. Which is exactly why the card stays the sensible choice for most people, and exactly why hardly anybody in Switzerland goes looking for a remote membership.
And the winter
None of these memberships helps from November to March, because the courses are closed. A simulator asks for neither a licence nor a membership and costs a median CHF 50 per bay and hour, divided by up to four people. The venues are on the map, the prices on the price overview.
Frequently asked questions
What is a remote golf membership?
A club membership with no playing rights on the home course, or limited ones. The club keeps your licence and handicap, the fee is lower than a full member's, and you pay a green fee on its own course.
Do remote memberships exist in Switzerland?
Only rarely. Most Swiss clubs do not run the category, and some note expressly that their cheap category is not a remote membership. The gap is filled by the ASGI and the Migros GolfCard, which carry 43 per cent of all Swiss licences.
Is a membership abroad worth it?
Only up to a point. Your handicap is then kept by a foreign federation, and some Swiss courses bill such a membership exactly as they bill clubless players. Golfclub Wylihof lists ASGI, Migros and clubless abroad on the same tariff line.
What is a passive membership?
A pause: you stay affiliated to the club and pay a small fee, but play little or not at all. Golf Club Klosters names CHF 500 plus a CHF 50 club fee and two rounds of 18 holes for it. It requires previous active membership.
When does a club membership beat a card?
As soon as you often play courses that put a surcharge on clubless players. At CHF 60 a round and twenty rounds a year that is CHF 1,200, which puts a cheap club category arithmetically ahead.
Sources
- Golf Club Klosters: Mitgliedschaft (Passivmitgliedschaft, keine Fernmitgliedschaft)
- Golfclub Erlen: Mitgliedschaft (Wochenmitgliedschaft und Jahresbeiträge)
- Golfclub Wylihof: Greenfee-Preise (Tarifzeile ASGI, Migros, clubfrei Ausland)
- Migros GolfCard: Mitgliedschaft
- ASGI: Mitgliedschaft