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
Companies are eager to hire strong players who use hybrid work schedules to schmooze clients on the course
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.
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.
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.
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Silence makes us feel awkward. Deploying it can be a superpower.
To get what you want, try closing your mouth.
A well-deployed silence can radiate confidence and connection. The trouble is, so many of us are awful at it.
We struggle to sit in silence with others, and rush to fill the void during a pause in conversation. We want to prove we’re smart or get people to like us, solve the problem or just stop that deafening, awkward sound of nothing.
The noise of social media and constant opinions have us convinced we must be louder to be heard. But do we?
“I should just shut up,” Joan Moreno , an administrative assistant in Spring, Texas, often thinks while hearing herself talk.
Still, she barrels on, giving job candidates at the hospital where she works a full history of the building and parking logistics. She slips into a monologue during arguments with her husband, even when there’s nothing good left to say. She tries to determine, via a torrent of texts, if her son is giving her the silent treatment. (Turns out he just had a cold.)
“I should have just held it in,” she thinks afterward.
We often talk ourselves out of a win. Our need to have the last word can make the business deal implode or the friend retreat, pushing us further from people we love and things we want.
“Let your breath be the first word,” advises Jefferson Fisher , a Texas trial lawyer who shares communication tips on social media.
The beauty of silence, he says, is that it can never be misquoted. Instead, it can act as a wet blanket, tamping down the heat of a dispute. Or it can be a mirror, forcing the other person to reflect on what they just said.
In court, he’ll pause for 10 seconds to let a witness’s insistence that she’s never texted while driving hang in the air. Sure enough, he says, she’ll fill the void, giving roundabout explanations and excuses before finally admitting, yes, she was on her phone.
For a mediation session, he trained a client to respond in a subdued manner if the other party said something to rile him up. When an insult was lobbed, the client sat quietly, then slowly asked his adversary to repeat the comment. No emotional reaction, just implicit power.
“You’re the one who’s in control,” Fisher says.
To be the boss, “you gotta be quiet,” says Daniel Hamburger , who spent years as the chief executive of education and healthcare technology firms.
He once sat across the negotiating table from an executive who was convinced his company was worth far more than Hamburger wanted to pay to acquire it. What Hamburger desperately wanted to do was explain all the reasons behind his math. What he actually did was throw out a number and then shut his mouth.
Soon they were shaking on a deal.
Hamburger, who retired last year and now sits on three corporate boards, also deployed strategic silence when running meetings or leading teams. If the boss chimes in first, he says, some people won’t speak up with valuable insights.
Days into one CEO job, Hamburger was confronted with two options for rewriting a piece of the company’s software. He didn’t answer, and instead turned the question back on the tech team.
“People were like, ‘Really? Are you really asking?’” he says. By morning, he had a 50-page deck from the team outlining the plan they’d long thought was best. He left them to it, and the project was done in record time, he says.
Staying mum can feel like going against biology. Humans are social animals, says Robert N. Kraft , a professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at Otterbein University, in Ohio.
“Our method of connecting—and we crave it—is talking,” he says, adding that it excites us, raising our blood pressure, adrenaline and cortisol.
For years, Kraft assigned his students a day without words. No talking, no texting. Some of the students’ friends reported later that they’d been unnerved. After all, silence can be a weapon.
Many students also found that when forced to listen, they bonded better with their peers.
When we spend conversations plotting what to say next, we’re focused on ourselves. Those on the receiving end often don’t want to hear our advice or semi related anecdotes anyway. They just want someone to listen as they work through things on their own.
Without pauses, we’re generally worse speakers, swerving into tangents or stumbling over sounds.
Michael Chad Hoeppner , a former actor who now runs a communications training firm, recommends an exercise to get used to taking a beat. Ask one question out loud, then draw a big question mark in the air with your finger—silently.
“That question mark is there to help you live through that fraught moment of, ‘I really should keep talking,’” Hoeppner says.
At a cocktail party or in the boardroom, you can subtly trace a question mark by your side or in your pocket to force a pause.
Fresh out of college, Kyler Spencer struggled through meetings with potential clients. Some sessions stretched to two hours and still didn’t end in a yes.
The financial adviser, based in Nashville, Ill., realized he was rambling for 15-minute stretches, spouting off random economic facts in an attempt to sound savvy and experienced.
“I basically just bulldozed the meeting,” says Spencer, now 27.
He started meditating and doing breathing exercises to calm his nerves before meetings. He now makes sure to stop talking after a minute or two. The other person will jump in, sharing about their life, fears and goals. It’s information Spencer can use to build trust and pitch the right products.
His client list soon started filling up, and happy customers now send referrals his way.
“It’s amazing,” he says, “what you learn when you’re not the one talking.”
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Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.