We’ve all been there, even those of us who won’t admit it: You walk up to a golf course and, despite the beautiful landscape and sunny weather, you just don’t feel at home. Maybe you’re a golfer but not a member of this club. Or perhaps you’re not a golfer, but you’ve been invited anyway and want to fit in. Regardless of one’s love for the game, many private golf clubs can feel intimidating and out of reach.
Enter InTown Golf Club, a members-only social club where golfers can play a round or take a lesson from a pro on simulators, and non-golfers can gather for meetings, meals, and other community-building programming. It’s an of-the-moment answer to a question crafted by co-founders Michael Williamson, David Cummings, and Clint Jarvis: How can we create a golf and dining experience with all the community-building aspects of a private club that’s more accessible—especially to people living in cities?
“The private club world is over capacity, with long waitlists, and not available to most people, with entry fees of $150,000 and up,” explains Williamson, who is the InTown Golf Club CEO. “So, golfers who don’t have a club aren’t playing much—or, they’re playing public golf which often lacks the community element of a club.” Add to that the non-golfers who don’t feel comfortable at traditional golf clubs but still want a home base away from their homes to hang out, and Williamson and Cummings identified their target membership.
Courtesy of Reid Rolls
(Courtesy of Reid Rolls)
But would golfers really join just to play on indoor simulators? And how could they design the clubs to appeal to non-golfers?
Regarding the first question, Williamson admits he was skeptical at first, despite owning his own simulator. But their timing proved fateful: Williamson and Cummings opened the first InTown Golf Club location in Atlanta in April 2021, right when local residents were hungry for opportunities to socialize away from home following the COVID-19 pandemic.
When it came to answering the second question, Williamson turned to his wife Michelle, an interior designer, and actress and fellow interior designer Brooklyn Decker, who’d become a close friend of hers, to consult on the design of their first location with Atlanta-based Ai3 Architects.
“Most country clubs are more traditional in their design. We wanted something different,” he says. “We really wanted the design to be something we’re known for so that our members would use the club for business meetings, lunches, and cocktail hours. Anybody can do indoor golf. It’s much harder—and more expensive—to do hospitality and design really well.”
Courtesy of Reid Rolls
(Courtesy of Reid Rolls)
For the design of InTown Golf’s subsequent locations—Charlotte, Philadelphia, Columbus, Ohio, Nashville, and Houston—Michelle, Brooklyn, and their third partner, Morgan Baker, have been involved from day one, bringing their distinct sensibility that combines residential-level comfort and sophistication with a love of vintage to establish a unique sense of place for each project.
“Our primary goal is to create a space for non-golfers like me to feel at home,” says Decker, of how she and her partners sought to differentiate their design from the intimidating atmosphere of more traditional golf clubs. “When I go into a golf club, I feel like I am breaking the rules. For all the ‘rules’ of golf, we wanted InTown Golf to feel fresh and a little irreverent.”
At the Nashville location, which opened in August 2025, Decker and her co-designers (who named their partnership By Idiots, reflecting their self-deprecating sense of humor) established their cheeky approach right at the entry, wrapping the curved walls in a dramatic, night garden scenic wallpaper by Gracie—with no view of golf bays in sight. “The wallpaper has this beautiful sense of arrival—it almost looks like a golf course at night—but you’re not seeing the golf bays,” says Decker.
Courtesy of Reid Rolls
(Courtesy of Reid Rolls)
That immersive approach to the decoration continues throughout the club. Golf bays are swathed entirely in a rich, custom red, ochre, and blue ikat fabric and wallpaper (Schumacher) and illuminated by a Murano glass chandelier. Inset into dark wood paneling, a wallpaper inspired by Japanese Edo-era paintings in rich terracotta and gold (Iksel Decorative Arts, available in the U.S. and Canada through Schumacher) infuses the dining spaces with warmth. “Our job here was to make it cozy and comfortable by bringing in the softness through our materiality,” says Decker.
The design team has made an art form out of bringing a more residential approach to this commercial space, leaning heavily on locally sourced vintage pieces, from coffee tables and sideboards to leather seating and occasional chairs—”which, in many ways, are more durable,” says Decker, who has been outspoken about how using antiques and vintage is a more sustainable approach to decorating.
Their local-first sourcing practice along with subtle nods to homegrown culture ensures that each InTown Golf location feels unique—take the bench seating in the dining lounge modeled after pews in Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. “For Nashville, we took a field trip for research before we started the design,” says Williamson. “What I love about our process is we are telling stories about each city through the design of our clubs,” says Williamson.
Courtesy of Reid Rolls
(Courtesy of Reid Rolls)
While they’ve leveraged their lack of interest in golf into a design strength of the clubs, Decker, Baker, and Williamson have also peppered each location with art, books, and accessories referencing golf culture like Easter eggs planted for the true enthusiasts. “We want to be respectful of those members who have a high golf IQ,” says Decker.
Coffee tables and bookshelves are stacked with golf and design books, for example, and accessorized with golf club ashtrays and other ephemera. Bays are named after famed local golfers or other figures, and menus are printed on scorecards. And every club has some sort of snake incorporated into its design.
Decker says, “We like to include little nods to the golf experience like spotting a snake, by having a taxidermy rattlesnake in Nashville and a pair of snake sconces in Charlotte, that open up opportunities for storytelling.”
Courtesy of Reid Rolls
(Courtesy of Reid Rolls)
InTown Golf is opening its next club in Raleigh later this summer. “We want to go where people are moving, so we seek out growing cities,” says Williamson, who notes InTown Golf’s membership skews slightly younger, with an average member age of 40, and is more diverse—with more women as primary members—than that of typical golf clubs.
Along with its design, Williamson and the design team want InTown Golf to be known for its food and community programming. “We want to make it really hospitable to women and men, so we host things like mahjong nights, Mother’s Day events, and various speaker series. And it’s very relaxed—the only dress code is no flip-flops—and very family-friendly,” says Decker. “If it feels intimidating to anyone, we’re not doing something right.”
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