Former editor of Golf magazine Kevin Cook explains how to succeed in business without really golfing.
They say that every golf match is won or lost on the first tee – in the bickering over strokes and handicaps that determines the day’s bets. If you can get the other guy to spot you a few extra strokes, you should come out ahead.
That’s how competitive – and money-hungry – golf tends to be, at least in America. It’s different in Scotland, the game’s ancestral home. Scottish golfers may bet a few pounds, but they’re just as likely to play for exercise or good auld-fashioned fun. Not coincidentally, the vast majority of Scottish courses are open to the public. In coastal towns all over, Scots of every size, shape, and social rank smack balls around links crisscrossing the village green. (That’s why the price of a round is properly called a green fee, not a “greens fee.”) By an accident of history, however, American golf developed as a country-club pastime, the posh pursuit of well-heeled movers, shakers, and dealmakers. That’s one reason Mark Twain is said to have dismissed the game as “a good walk spoiled.”
The American golf course has been a hagglers’ haven for more than a century. It was after a round of golf in Yonkers, N.Y., in 1901 that Andrew Carnegie and Charles M. Schwab made one of the biggest deals in history. Carnegie scribbled his selling price for Carnegie Steel on the back of his scorecard: $480 million. (“Serious money in those days,” golfers like to say.) They shook on it, and U.S. Steel was born. Since then, many businesspeople have seen the course as an offsite extension of the office or the boardroom. To rise in the corporate world, it seems, you need to know your way around the links.
This would appear to put the novice golfer at a professional disadvantage. But you can in fact succeed at what executives call “business golf” without being much of a golfer. That’s because it’s not how you hit the ball that counts. It’s how you handle yourself from the first tee to the most important hole on the course: the 19th.
Almost all golfers believe that skill level has a direct bearing on success as a golfing dealmaker. They are wrong. Why? Because everyone you’re playing with is trying to impress you. It’s one of the sport’s secrets: The game is so hard that many, if not most, golfers spend half the time quaking in their Softspikes. They’re too nervous about their own games to pay much attention to yours.
This can work to your advantage. If you praise other players’ best shots, they’ll be thrilled. If they’re the CEO type, they may think, “This person knows quality.” If they occupy a lower rung on the corporate ladder, they’ll be flattered that you noticed their shot. Either way, the other golfers’ play matters more than your own. This approach comes with benefits: It takes the pressure off you and can make you a popular playing partner.
So don’t sweat a few extra strokes. Just try your level best. Once, when a reporter asked Hall of Famer Severiano Ballesteros how he could possibly four-putt a green, Seve shrugged winningly and said, “I miss, I miss, I miss, I make!” He was never more appealing.
But what if it gets really ugly? You hit one in the woods and take half a dozen swings to chop your ball into a lake. Disaster! Or is it? I’ve been there – I’ve been there televised – and survived to tell the tale. The moral is: As long as you count every stroke, your fellow golfers will only like you better after your triple or sextuple bogey. They were spared the nightmare, after all.
They may even offer to shave strokes for you.
“I had a 10,” you say.
“But you had an impossible lie. We’ll call it a 7.”
“Thanks, but it was 10,” you say with your chin up. “But hey, two or three holes in one and I’m right back in the game.”
In business golf, as opposed to tournament golf, playing worse is often a plus. I learned that lesson years ago, when I shot a pretty-fair 78 to win the match and the money from an executive who wanted to be my next boss. He promptly hired someone else. A couple of years later, I hit a shot that almost decapitated another prospective boss. An instant after my swing, the seven-iron in my hands felt weirdly weightless. I had swung so hard that the clubhead flew off. Now, to my horror, it whizzed like a silver bullet at my prospective boss’ head.
“Fore!”
He ducked, then laughed. “That’ll cost you the hole!” I lost the match with the clubs I had left, but got the job.
You can learn from my lousy example. The point is that it doesn’t matter so much if you’re 3 over par or 23, as long as you give your all and count every stroke. Do that and your playing partners will see you as one of the golfing elect, a select minority who don’t take mulligans or gimmes. Win or lose, that makes you a real golfer.
The rest is simple enough:
Be honest in that first-tee haggling over handicap strokes. If you don’t have an official handicap, say so. Too many novice players guess, and they guess low: “I’m about a 10.” Ten-handicappers usually shoot in the low 80s, which is better than 95 percent of recreational golfers. If you typically bogey half the holes and double-bogey the rest, you should get a stroke per hole from a 10-handicapper.
Turn off your cell phone and leave it off during your round. If you can’t leave the office behind when you’re on the course, don’t leave the office.
Keep an eye on every shot. Help other players find lost balls, and don’t spend more than two or three minutes looking for a wayward shot of your own.
Always pay a losing bet – and pay up with a smile. Congratulate the winners, and feel free to threaten them with a sure loss next time.
But if you win a bet, offer to let the loser off the hook. “Bad luck, forget it. We can go double-or-nothing next time.” A real golfer will pay up anyway, but it’s good form to make the offer.
Don’t bring up serious business until you’re at the 19th hole, the clubhouse bar. That’s where businesspeople have closed deals since the days of Carnegie and Schwab.
Talk golf over the first drink. One surefire topic: the other players’ “shots of the day.” Then, when the second drink arrives, you can shift gears. That’s the time to forget birdies and start talking turkey. — Kevin Cook