When the clubhouse was first fitted out in 1997, the committee could not agree on how the dining room should be arranged. Some wanted small tables, private and discreet, the way the smart clubs did it. One member, a joiner by trade, said nothing, and instead turned up one morning with a single length of oak eleven feet long.
He set it down the middle of the room and said that at Greensward a man would sit where there was room, next to whoever happened to be there, and that would be the end of the matter. It was, and it has been ever since.
You do not choose your neighbour at the long table. This, we have found, is the whole point of it.
What the table does
A small table seats your own party and keeps the rest of the room at arm's length. The long table does the opposite. The four-ball ahead of you, the two members you've nodded to for years but never spoken with, the guest down from the city — all of it ends up elbow to elbow over the same soup.
Friendships have been made along its length, deals quietly undone, and at least one marriage arranged. The oak has darkened, a few initials have been carved into the underside where the secretary can't see them, and the table has not moved from the centre of the room in nearly thirty years. Nor will it.
— From the club history