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.

Give gold bugs their due. The yellow metal has been a light in the investing darkness. At a recent $3,406 per troy ounce, it’s up 30% this year, to the envy of stock, bond, and Bitcoin holders. Cash-flow purists will call this a flash in the pan, but they should look again. Over the past 20 years, SPDR Gold Shares , an exchange-traded fund, has surged 630%—85 points more than SPDR S&P 500 , which tracks shares of the biggest U.S. companies.

That isn’t supposed to happen. If businesses couldn’t be expected to outperform an unthinking metal over decades, shareholders would demand that they cease operations and hoard bullion instead. So, what’s going on? If this were gasoline or Nike shoes or Nvidia chips, we would look to supply versus demand. With immutable gold, nearly every ounce that has ever been found is still around somewhere, so price action is mostly about demand. That has been ravenous and broad since 2022.

That year, the U.S. and dozens of allies placed sweeping sanctions on Russia, including its largest banks, and China went on a bullion spree. Its buying has since cooled, but other central banks have stepped in. Perhaps this is unsurprising, in light of a decades-long diversification by finance ministers away from the U.S. dollar, which is down to 57% of foreign reserves from over 70% in 2000. But the recent uptick in gold stockpiling looks to JPMorgan Chase , the world’s largest bullion dealer, like a debasement trade. Investors are nervous about President Donald Trump’s tariffs, his browbeating of the Federal Reserve Chairman over interest rates, and blowout U.S. deficits.

Surging Demand

It isn’t just bankers. Demand among individuals for gold bars and coins has been surging, with some dealers experiencing sporadic shortages. Gold ETFs were bucking the trend, but flows there have turned solidly positive since last summer, including recently in China. All told, there is now an estimated $4 trillion worth of gold held by central banks, and $5 trillion by private investors. Calculated against $260 trillion for all financial assets, including stocks, bonds, cash, and alternatives, that works out to a global gold portfolio allocation of 3.5%, a record.

What’s next? BofA Securities says that central banks have room for much more gold buying, and that China’s insurance companies are likely to dabble, too. RBC Capital Markets analyst Chris Louney says ETFs could drive demand growth from here, especially if angst reigns. “Gold is that asset of last resort…the part of the investing universe that investors really look for when they have a lot of questions elsewhere,” he says.

Russ Koesterich, a portfolio manager for BlackRock , a major player in ETFs including the iShares Gold Trust , says that gold has proven itself as a store of value, and deserves a 2% to 4% weighting for most investors. “I think it’s a tough call to say, ‘Would you chase it here?’ ” he says. “There have been some pullbacks. Those might represent a good opportunity, particularly for people who don’t have any exposure.”

Daniel Major, who covers materials stocks for UBS , points out that gold miners mostly haven’t wrapped themselves in glory in recent years with their dealmaking and asset management. As a result, a major index for the group is trading 30% below pre-Covid levels relative to earnings. UBS increased its 2026 gold price target by 23%, to $3,500 per troy ounce, before gold’s latest lurch higher. Many miners are producing at a cost of $1,200 to $2,000. Major has bumped up earnings estimates across his coverage. “I think we’re gonna see further upward revisions to consensus earnings,” he says. “This is what’s attractive about the gold space right now.”

Major’s favorite gold stocks are Barrick Gold , Newmont , and Endeavour Mining . More on those in a moment. We also have thoughts on how not to buy gold—and what not to expect it to do: Don’t count on it to keep beating stocks long term, or to provide precise short-term protection from inflation spikes and stock swoons. But first, a little history, chemistry, and rules of the yellow brick road.

Flesh of the Gods

The first gold coins of reliable weight and purity featured a lion and bull stamped on the face, and were minted at the order of King Croesus of Lydia, in modern-day Turkey, around 550 B.C. But by then, gold had been used as a show of riches for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians called gold the flesh of the gods, and laid the boy King Tutankhamen to rest in a gold coffin weighing 243 pounds. The Old Testament says that under King Solomon, gold in Jerusalem was as common as stone. Allow for literary license; silicon, an element in most stones, is 28.2% of the Earth’s crust, whereas gold is 0.0000004%.

Marco Polo described palace walls in China covered with gold. Mansa Musa I of Mali in West Africa, on a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324, is said to have splashed so much gold around Cairo on the way that he crashed the local price by 20%, and it took 12 years to recover. To Montezuma, the Aztec king whose gold lured Cortés from Spain, the metal was called, as it still is by some in Central Mexico, teocuitlatl —literally, god excrement. Golden eras, gold medals, the Golden Rule, and golden calf—so deep is the historical association between gold and wealth, excellence, and vice that it seems to have a mystical hold on humanity. In fact, it’s more a matter of chemical inevitability.

Trade and savings are easier with money. Pick one for the job from the 118 known elements. Years ago on National Public Radio, Columbia University chemist Sanat Kumar used a process of elimination. Best to avoid elements that are cumbersome gases or liquids at room temperature. Stay away from the highly reactive columns I and II on the periodic table—we can’t have lithium ducats bursting into flame. Money should be rare, unlike zinc, which pennies are made from, but not too rare, unlike iridium, used for aircraft spark plugs. It shouldn’t be poisonous like arsenic or radioactive like radium—that rules out more elements than you might think. Of the handful that are left, eliminate any that weren’t discovered until recent centuries, or whose melting points were too high for early furnaces.

That leaves silver and gold. Silver tarnishes, but rarer, noble gold holds its luster. It is malleable enough to pound into sheets so thin that light will shine through. And, despite the best efforts of Isaac Newton and other would-be alchemists, it cannot be artificially created—profitably, anyhow. Technically, there is something called nuclear transmutation. If you can free a proton from mercury’s nucleus or insert one into platinum’s, you’ll end up with a nucleus with 79 protons, and that’s gold. Scientists did just that more than 80 years ago using mercury and a particle accelerator. But what little gold they produced was radioactive. If you think you can do better, you’ll likely need a nuclear reactor to prove it, but a large gold mine is one-fifth the cost, and we have to believe the permitting is easier.

We passed over copper due to commonness, but it has become too valuable to use for pennies. The 95% copper content of a pre-1982 penny is worth about three cents today. The equivalent amount of silver goes for $3.10, and gold, more than $320. But the three trade in different units. A pound of copper is up 17% this year, at $4.72. Silver and gold are typically quoted per troy ounce, a measure of hazy origin and clear tediousness, which is 9.7% heavier than a regular ounce. A troy ounce of silver is $32.70, up 13% this year.

Some Finer Points

Confused? This won’t help: The purity of investment gold, called its fineness, is measured in either parts per thousand or on a 24-point karat scale. A karat is different from a carat, the gemstone weight, but our friends in the U.K.—who adopted troy ounces in the 15th century—often spell both words with a “c.” Gold bricks like the ones central banks swap are called Good Delivery bars, and weigh 400 troy ounces, give or take, worth more than $1.3 million. If you buy a few, lift with your legs; each weighs a little over 27 regular pounds (as opposed to troy pounds, which, it pains us to note, are 12 troy ounces, not 16).

There are many options for smaller players, like Canadian Maple Leaf coins, which are 24-karat gold; South African Krugerrands, at 22 karats, and alloyed with copper for durability; and Gold American Eagles, 22 karats, with some silver and copper. Proof coins cost extra for their high polish, artistry, and limited runs, and may or may not become collectibles. Humbler-looking bullion coins are bought for their metal value. Prefer the latter if you aren’t a coin hobbyist. Avoid infomercials and stick with high-volume dealers. Even so, markups of 2% to 4% are common. Costco Wholesale , which sells gold in single troy ounce Swiss bars, charges 2%, but often runs out, and limits purchases to two bars per member a day. Factor in the cost of storage and insurance, too.

ETFs are more economical. For example, iShares Gold Trust costs 0.25%, not counting commissions. For long-term holders, as opposed to traders, there is a smaller fund called iShares Gold Trust Micro , which costs 0.09%.

Resist fleeing stocks for gold. The surprisingly long outperformance of gold is mostly a function of its recent run-up. From 1975 through last year, gold turned $1 invested into about $16, versus $348 for U.S. stocks. That starting point has a legal basis. President Franklin Roosevelt largely outlawed private gold ownership in 1933; President Richard Nixon delinked the dollar from gold in 1971; and President Gerald Ford made private ownership legal again at the end of 1974.

Gold has been a so-so inflation hedge over the past half-century, and at times a disappointing one. In 2022, when U.S. inflation peaked at a 40-year high of over 9%, the gold price went nowhere. The problem is that high inflation can prompt a sharp increase in interest rates. “If people can clip a 5% coupon on a T-bill, often they’d prefer to do that than have either a lump of metal or an ETF that doesn’t produce cash flow,” says BlackRock’s Koesterich.

Likewise, while gold has generally offset stock declines this year, it hasn’t always done so in the heat of the moment. Recall tariff “liberation day” early this month, which sent U.S. stocks down close to 11% in three days and pulled gold down nearly 5%. “This isn’t an uncommon scenario,” says RBC’s Louney. “When investors were losing elsewhere in their portfolio, gold was sold as well to cover those losses.”

Our top tip on how gold behaves is this: It doesn’t. People do the behaving, and they are appallingly unreliable. Use bonds as a stock market hedge. If they don’t work, fall back to patience. For inflation protection, think of assets that are a better match than gold for the goods and services that you buy every week. A diversified commodities fund has precious metals but also industrial ones, along with energy and grains. Treasury inflation-protected securities are explicitly linked to the consumer price index, which measures inflation for a theoretical individual whose buying patterns differ from your own, but are close enough.

Own a house. Stick with a workaday, reliable car. Yes, cars deteriorate. But so does nearly everything on a long enough timeline. Rely mostly on stocks, which represent businesses, which wouldn’t endure if they couldn’t turn raw inputs like commodities into something more profitable. There’s even a miner, Newmont, in the S&P 500.

The Case for Mining Stocks

Speaking of which, UBS’ Major recently upgraded both Canada’s Barrick and Denver-based Newmont from Neutral to Buy. “Both very much fall into that category of having a challenging recent track record,” he says. Newmont has lost 20% over the past three years while gold has gained 76%, which Major blames on difficult acquisitions and earnings shortfalls. Barrick, down 8%, has been in a dispute with Mali since 2023, when its government instituted a new mining code that gives it a greater share of profits. In recent days, authorities have shut the company’s offices in the capital city of Bamako over alleged nonpayment of taxes.

These are the sort of headaches that Krugerrands in a safe don’t produce. But Major calls expectations “adequately reset,” free cash flow attractive, and guidance achievable. Newmont, at 13 times next year’s earnings consensus, is selling assets, and Barrick, at 10 times, has healthy production growth.

Major also likes London-based, Toronto-listed Endeavour Mining , up 40% over the past three years and trading at nine times earnings, although he says it has “higher jurisdictional risk.” It is focused on West Africa, especially Burkina Faso, which had a coup d’état in 2022. You’d think the stock would be doing worse amid such political upheaval. Then again, Burkina Faso since 1966 has had eight coups, five coup attempts, and one street ousting of a president who tried to change the constitution to remain in power. That works out to an uprising every four years, on average.

Montezuma’s scatological name for gold might have been prescient, considering the sometimes-odious consequences for small countries that find it.