The socks should go up to your knees, and your shirt should go down to your knees. You're not there for a suntan.5Never tuck your trousers inside your socks when the ground is muddy. If you're in France, though, you will probably not be allowed to play unless you are in jeans.2 Never wear a T-shirt without a collar. The secretary likes to have something to grab when he decides to frogmarch you off the premises for conduct unbecoming.3 Never wear trainers They are far too comfortable. Spiked golf shoes that make your feet sore on hard ground are de rigueur, although some courses now favour rubber soles which are gentler on the greens.4Never wear ankle-length socks if you are in shorts. The secretary has written to confirm your application to join the club.

But as a new member you are on probation, at least for your first 10 years. If you thought the interview was gruelling, imagine how tough life will be now you are under the microscope of the entire membership. This check list of dos and don'ts may at least help to ease the embarrassment of those first few visits.1 Even if you're a rock star and have a clothing contract with Levi-Strauss, under no circumstances should you wear jeans. There's no reason why we shouldn't play six or nine holes if we want to."Apart from rival clubs, courses now face competition from 600 driving ranges in Britain as well.

Whatever anyone might say, the power definitely resides with the consumer at the moment."One suspects that not too many of Muirfield's Honourable Company will visit their local driving range or join one of the newer clubs this summer, but that should mean more room for the rest of us.10 dos and don'tsYou've finally cracked it. In those circumstances, it doesn't make financial sense to be a member of a club. Apart from the cost of taking up golf, the main deterrents for beginners and inexperienced players are the game's relative difficulty and the time it takes to play."In the first instance, it's important to receive tuition from a PGA professional. The time problem is easily solved if we overthrow the tyranny of the 18-hole round. "That gives players who don't belong to a club the opportunity to sample a variety of courses in their area.

The consumer wants choice, not just over which club to join but whether to become a member at all or remain a green-fee player."More than half the people who play golf in this country do so fewer than 10 times a year. Many of those who do pay a joining fee enjoy varying degrees of refundability and can invest in debentures as well."Even though inflation is now almost as low as the England football team's goals-per-game average, many of the older clubs seem set in the milk-a- captive-audience mode, routinely hiking subscriptions by up to 10 per cent.Only an uprising of poll-tax proportions is likely to upset this status quo at golf's more established homes, but the time could come when some members vote with their feet and defect to clubs which offer better value.For newcomers who have yet to commit themselves to a particular club it, is a different story "Green fees are also coming down," Hegarty said. "And 36 per cent of new courses don't charge a joining fee for membership at all. And much of the tournament golf that used to appear regularly on terrestrial television has been banished to the inevitably smaller audiences serviced by satellite channels.But while the media coverage may not currently appeal to golf's wider public, the game is set for a summer of feverish activity with so many clubs competing to recruit people whose activities to date have been confined to playing at the local pitch-and-putt."The average subscription at the newer clubs is pounds 466, a decline of 7 per cent on last year," Hegarty added. Despite the excitement generated by Europe's Ryder Cup triumph last September and Nick Faldo's dramatic eclipse of Greg Norman in the Masters, the circulation figures for Britain's four monthly golf magazines have dropped by almost a third over the last 18 months. Nevertheless, that figure still means that more than two million people will venture on to a course or a driving range at least once a year."This widespread interest in the game is in some ways a surprise.

"As many as 83 per cent of them are in financial danger and they need more golfers, green-fee payers and members."Forty-five per cent of the adult population show an interest in golf, but only 5 per cent actually play the game. The spectres of membership waiting lists, minimum handicap requirements and astronomic joining fees are demonstrably on the retreat."The new clubs are desperate for people to come and play their courses," said Colin Hegarty, the director of the Golf Research Group, which monitors golfing facilities in the British Isles. And in the case of the latter, too many were located on set-aside farmland situated in obscure rural areas.Ironically, this financial crisis has created a buyers' market for golf in Britain for the first time since the Second World War. Either they cost too much to build at a time when the recession was biting and interest rates were high, or they were too far from the big population centres.In the case of the former, not enough people could afford the joining fees, which at their highest exceeded pounds 30,000. A pounds 1.5bn development boom was triggered in the late 1980s by Demand for Golf, a report from the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, which called for 700 new courses to cater for people who wished to take up the game (and an extra 200,000 names have been registered with the English Golf Union since then).Inevitably, many of the resulting projects ran into financial problems.