A Killer Golf Swing Is a Hot Job Skill Now

Standout golfers who aren’t quite PGA Tour material now have somewhere else to play professionally: Corporate America.

People who can smash 300-yard drives and sink birdie putts are sought-after hires in finance, consulting, sales and other industries, recruiters say. In the hybrid work era, the business golf outing is back in a big way.

Executive recruiter Shawn Cole says he gets so many requests to find ace golfers that he records candidates’ handicaps, an index based on average number of strokes over par, in the information packets he submits to clients. Golf alone can’t get you a plum job, he says—but not playing could cost you one.

“I know a guy that literally flies around the world in a private jet loaded with French wine, and he golfs and lands hundred-million-dollar deals,” Cole says.

Tee times and networking sessions have long gone hand-in-golf-glove. Despite criticism that doing business on the course undermines diversity, equity and inclusion efforts—and the fact that golf clubs haven’t always been open to women and minorities —people who mix golf and work say the outings are one of the last reprieves from 30-minute calendar blocks

Stars like Tiger Woods and Michelle Wie West helped expand participation in the sport. Still, just 22% of golfers are nonwhite and 26% are women, according to the National Golf Foundation.

To lure more people, clubs have relaxed rules against mobile-phone use on the course, embracing white-collar professionals who want to entertain clients on the links without disconnecting from the office. It’s no longer taboo to check email from your cart or take a quick call at the halfway turn.

With so much other business conducted virtually, shaking hands on the green and schmoozing over clubhouse beers is now seen as making an extra effort, not slacking off.

Americans played a record 531 million rounds last year. Weekday play has nearly doubled since 2019, with much of the action during business hours , according to research by Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom .

“It would’ve been scandalous in 2019 to be having multiple meetings a week on the golf course,” Bloom says. “In 2024, if you’re producing results, no one’s going to see anything wrong with it.”

A financial adviser at a major Wall Street bank who competes on the amateur circuit told me he completes 90% of his tasks by 10 a.m. because he manages long-term investment plans that change infrequently. The rest of his workday often involves golfing with clients and prospects. He’s a member of a private club with a multiyear waiting list, and people jump at the chance to join him on a course they normally can’t access.

There is an art to bringing in business this way. He never initiates shoptalk, telling his playing partners the round is about having fun and getting to know each other. They can’t resist asking about investment strategies by the back nine, he says.

Work hard, play hard

Matt Parziale golfed professionally on minor-league tours for several years, but when his dream of making the big time ended, he had to get a regular job. He became a firefighter, like his dad.

A few years later he won one of the biggest amateur tournaments in the country, earning spots in the 2018 Masters and U.S. Open, where he tied for first among non-pros.

The brush with celebrity brought introductions to business types that Parziale, 35 years old, says he wouldn’t have met otherwise. One connection led to a job with a large insurance broker. In 2022 he jumped to Deland, Gibson Insurance Associates in Wellesley, Mass., which recognised his golf game as a tool to help win large accounts.

He rescheduled our interview because he was hosting clients at a private club on Cape Cod, and squeezed me in the next morning, before teeing off with a business group in Newport, R.I.

A short time ago, Parziale couldn’t imagine making a living this way. Now he’s the norm in elite amateur golf circles.

“I look around at the guys at the events I play, and they all have these jobs ,” he says.

His boss, Chief Executive Chip Gibson, says Parziale is good at bringing in business because he puts as much effort into building relationships as honing his game. A golf outing is merely an opportunity to build trust that can eventually lead to a deal, and it’s a misconception that people who golf during work hours don’t work hard, he says.

Barry Allison’s single-digit handicap is an asset in his role as a management consultant at Accenture , where he specialises in travel and hospitality. He splits time between Washington, D.C., and The Villages, Fla., a golf mecca that boasts more than 50 courses.

It can be hard to get to know people in distributed work environments, he says. Go golfing and you’ll learn a lot about someone’s temperament—especially after a bad shot.

“If you see a guy snap a club over his knee, you don’t know what he’s going to snap next,” Allison says.

Special access

On a recent afternoon I was a lunch guest at Brae Burn Country Club, a private enclave outside Boston that was the site of U.S. Golf Association championships won by legends like Walter Hagen and Bobby Jones. I parked in the second lot because the first one was full—on a Wednesday.

My host was Cullen Onstott, managing director of the Onstott Group executive search firm and a former collegiate golfer at Fairfield University. He explained one reason companies prize excellent golfers is they can put well-practiced swings on autopilot and devote most of their attention to chitchat.

It’s hard to talk with potential customers about their needs and interests when you’re hunting for errant shots in the woods. It’s also challenging if you show off.

The first hole at Brae Burn is a 318-yard par 4 that slopes down, enabling big hitters like Onstott to reach the putting green in a single stroke. But to stay close to his playing partners and keep the conversation flowing, he sometimes hits a shorter shot.

Having an “in” at an exclusive club can make you a catch. Bo Burch, an executive recruiter in North Carolina, says clubs in his region tend to attract members according to their business sectors. One might be chock-full of real-estate investors while another has potential buyers of industrial manufacturing equipment.

Burch looks for candidates who are members of clubs that align with his clients’ industries, though he stresses that business acumen comes first when filling positions.

Tami McQueen, a former Division I tennis player and current chief marketing officer at Atlanta investment firm BIP Capital, signed up for private golf lessons this year. She had noticed colleagues were wearing polos with course logos and bringing their clubs to work. She wanted in.

McQueen joined business associates on the golf course for the first time in March at the PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. She has lowered her handicap to a respectable 26 and says her new skill lends a professional edge.

“To be able to say, ‘I can play with you and we can have those business meetings on the course’ definitely opens a lot more doors,” she says.

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

A Killer Golf Swing Is a Hot Job Skill Now

Companies are eager to hire strong players who use hybrid work schedules to schmooze clients on the course

Work hard, play hard

Special access

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.