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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Powell says he has no intention of leaving Fed before his term expires
US: The Federal Reserve approved a quarter-point interest-rate cut Thursday, the latest step to prevent large rate increases of the prior 2½ years from weakening the labour market as inflation eases.
The decision, coming the same week as the election of Donald Trump to a second presidential term, followed an initial cut of a half-point in September and will bring the benchmark federal-funds rate to a range between 4.5% and 4.75%. All 12 Fed voters backed the cut.
Officials have said those moves are warranted because they are more confident that inflation will return to the central bank’s target and because they believe rates are still high enough, even with the latest cuts, to dampen economic activity.
The move was expected. Stocks and Treasury yields were steady after the announcement.
“We are committed to maintaining our economy’s strength,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference. He said officials are confident that with an “appropriate recalibration of our policy stance,” inflation can continue heading lower with a solid economy.
Trump’s election victory this week has the potential to reshape the economic outlook, with presumed GOP majorities on both sides of Capitol Hill enabling a broad shift on taxes, spending, immigration and trade. Economists are divided over whether the mix of policies will boost or weaken growth and drive up prices.
The shift in the outlook, in turn, has fuelled questions on Wall Street over whether the Fed will alter its earlier expectation that rates could be steadily dialled lower over the coming year or two.
Powell said it was too soon to say how the next administration’s policies would reshape the economic outlook.
“We don’t guess, we don’t speculate, we don’t assume” what policies will get put into place, Powell said. “In the near term, the election will have no effects on our policy decisions.”
Powell also said he had no intention of leaving the Fed before his four-year term as chair expires in May 2026. “Not permitted under the law,” Powell said when asked if he believed the president could remove him or other Fed personnel from their positions before their term expires.
Since the Fed cut rates in September, longer-dated bond yields have climbed notably, meaning the cost to borrow for a mortgage or car loan has gone up. Yields have increased in large part because better economic data has led investors to reduce their worries about a recession, which could have triggered larger rate cuts.
But some analysts think the bond-market selloff may also reflect concerns by some investors about higher deficits or inflation in a second Trump administration.
Either way, the market has generated an unusual result: Borrowing costs rose after the Fed cut rates. The average 30-year mortgage rate has jumped since mid-September, to 6.8% this week from 6.1%, according to Freddie Mac.
Over a similar time frame, investors in interest-rate futures markets have steadily reduced their expectations over how much the Fed will cut rates over the next year or so. They now see the Fed cutting rates to around 3.6% by 2026, up from an estimated trough of 2.8% in September, according to Citi.
Officials are trying to bring rates back to a more “normal” or “neutral” setting that neither spurs nor slows growth. But they don’t know what constitutes a normal rate. Policies that boost economic activity or prices could also lead officials to conclude that they should maintain a moderately restrictive rate stance. That means they would hold rates somewhat higher than a normal or neutral level.
Before the 2008-09 financial crisis, many thought a neutral rate might be around 4%, but after the crisis and an extremely sluggish recovery, economists and Fed officials concluded the neutral rate might be closer to 2%.
Interest-rate projections that officials submitted in September show most of them expected that if the economy expanded solidly with inflation continuing to cool , they could cut rates to around 3.5% next year.
Inflation based on the Fed’s preferred index was 2.1% in September, from a year earlier. A separate measure of so-called core inflation that strips out volatile food and energy prices was 2.7%. The Fed targets 2% inflation over time.
Because officials don’t have much conviction over where the neutral rate sits, they are likely to be guided by how the economy performs in the months ahead. If inflation keeps slowing and the demand for workers looks soft, officials could conclude it makes sense to continue cutting rates along the path they envisioned in September.
“We’re going to move carefully as this goes on so we can increase the chances that we get it right,” Powell said. “We’re trying to steer between the risk of moving too quicky…or moving too slowly. We’re trying to be on a middle path.”
If inflation progress stalls or ebullient financial markets raise concerns that inflation might get stuck above their target, officials might face more reservations around continuing to cut rates at a steady, meeting-after-meeting clip.
The most immediate focus is whether the Fed will cut again at its upcoming meeting in December. In September, 19 participants were about evenly divided over whether to cut rates one or two more times this year. Nine of them penciled in no more than one cut in either November or December, while 10 penciled in two cuts.
“There’s a lot to learn between now and the December meeting,” said Diane Swonk, chief U.S. economist at KPMG. “They can’t leave the door wide open, but they can’t close the door either.”
Powell said Thursday it was too soon to rule anything “out or in” at that meeting. Slowing down the pace of rate cuts is “something we’re just beginning to think about,” he said. “We’re on a path to a more neutral stance. That has not changed at all since September. We’re just going to have to see where the data lead us.”
Even before the election result, recent data suggested that cutting again would be a finely balanced decision because inflation looks like it might end the year slightly above officials’ projection, while the unemployment rate has edged lower recently, said Matthew Luzzetti, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank.
The election result— which sent stock markets to new highs while raising the prospect of stronger growth, higher inflation and better labour-market outcomes—boosted the odds that the Fed forgoes a cut next month, he said.
“Those could present a strong case from a risk-management perspective to potentially skip that meeting,” said Luzzetti.
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