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Experience Bald Head
The Bald Head Island Club clubhouse, a white building with a cupola and wraparound porch, behind a manicured lawn and palms

Private club

Bald Head Island Club

Private access

Private club. Renters of a member's home can buy a Temporary Guest Member pass for their stay.

The island's private club: an eighteen-hole golf course through the maritime forest, an aquatic center, tennis and pickleball, fitness, and dining. Renters of member homes can buy in for their stay.

The golf course

George Cobb laid out the island’s golf course in 1974, and Tim Cate renovated it in 2010. It is the only course on Bald Head, and it plays like the island around it: eighteen holes threaded through maritime forest, marsh, and dune, with live oaks and palmetto crowding the fairways and the ocean never far off. You reach it, like everything here, by golf cart.

Golf is the club’s headline, but you do not have to be a golfer to make use of a stay’s membership. See how to actually play the course for the visitor routes onto it.

The rest of club life

Beyond the course, the club runs an aquatic center, tennis and pickleball courts, a fitness facility, and dining on-island. A stay’s Temporary Guest Member pass opens all of it, not just the golf, which is what makes it worth doing even for a family that never picks up a club.

Getting in as a visitor

The club is private, but it was built with the island’s rental economy in mind. Many members rent their homes, and when a home carries a Full or Lifestyle membership, the people renting it can enroll in the club’s Temporary Guest Member Program and buy access for the length of the stay.

A few things worth knowing before you count on it:

  • Not every rental qualifies. Access rides on the home’s membership. Ask the rental company or owner before you book if club access matters to your trip.
  • Register as early as you can. Guest passes are limited and handed out first-registered, first-admitted.
  • Mind the deadline. Registering fewer than seven days before arrival, or during holiday and peak weeks, adds a $100 service fee.