Golf has long been about making connections. That won’t change in an LIV-PGA Tour world

By Will Graves, The Associated Press on July 17, 2023.

Kerry Bowie’s daughters have dreams. Big ones. His 15-year-old wants to go to law school, maybe dabble in politics. His 12-year-old plans to be a business magnate.

And while their schedules are jammed, at some point this summer Bowie plans to take them to Franklin Park in the heart of Boston, place a golf club in their hands and have them learn about a game whose influence extends far beyond fairways and greens.

“There are some things people miss out on by not doing it,” Bowie says. “To be that young lady who plays golf, it changes things.”

Especially in the corporate world, where the golf course – and sometimes the 19th hole, the driving range or the locker room – can open doors that shareholder meetings, business lunches, Zoom calls and cocktail mixers cannot.

If Bowie needs to offer his daughters proof, he need only point to the way the tectonic plates under pro golf moved last month, when the acrimonious standoff between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf ended with a staggering deal that materialized seemingly out of nowhere. It’s a detente whose groundwork was laid by quiet negotiations between leaders of both organizations during a round at a tony private golf club southwest of London.

But the golf course’s reputation as a space where deals can get done and careers – professional, political or otherwise – can be forever altered is hardly new. It’s not a coincidence that most Fortune 500 CEOs believe golf has helped their career. No wonder as many as 90% of business executives have taken up the game, seeing it as a way to unwind while also making connections far away from the formality of an office setting.

“When you’re on the golf course with someone, it’s the best place to learn about their ethics and their values and their emotional intelligence as well,” said Susan Ascher, president and CEO of New Jersey-based consulting firm The Ascher Group.

Golf’s reputation comes with baggage. The game has traditionally been played by the affluent – most of them men, most of them white – some of whom organized country clubs that can set the parameters of membership at their discretion. That has, historically, included racism, sexism and anti-Semitism.

“It’s been a man’s sport,” said Dr. Deborah Gray, a marketing professor at Central Michigan University. “Research shows that golf is a legacy thing. It’s generational.”

LIV was born in part out of Saudi Arabia’s bid to fulfill the “Vision 2030″ initiative created by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The vision includes investing heavily in sports and entertainment in hopes of diversifying the country’s economy, and lessening its reliance on its massive oil reserves.

The upstart organization failed to make much of a dent globally. TV ratings in the U.S., in particular, were a fraction of what the PGA Tour draws weekly. Yet in less than 12 months it managed to bring the PGA to the negotiating table, creating a partnership that gives the Saudis the kind of access to the U.S. golf world that LIV had been trying – and failing – to secure.

The fact that the pact was between two groups in a sport whose image is so closely aligned with the corporate world could be considered a case of sport imitating life.

Alisha Jernack began taking lessons in her 20s. She couldn’t help but notice the number of executives and managers at Mazars, the international audit, tax and advisory firm where she worked, who went out to the course together.

She saw only one solution: grab a club and swing away. “I saw it as an opportunity to advance in my career,” Jernack says. She draws a direct line from some of the relationships she has established on the golf course to increased opportunities at work. She became a partner at Mazars in 2020.

While the groups Jernack often plays with can still be male-dominated, she’s noticed a slight shift in the demographics. So has Ascher, who began organizing “Course Connection” outings at Montclair Golf Club about 10 years ago. The gender split is pretty equal, with interest among women “exploding” in recent years.

“Women are seeing that, yeah, if the guys are doing it and they’re making deals on the golf course, why can’t I?” Ascher said.

Women, however, face obstacles that men do not, particularly when it comes to child care. Gray has been an advocate for increasing opportunities for women to get involved with the game, something she believes can be done by having outings scheduled into the work day instead of after hours.

Steve Branch sees the game as vital to career development, one of the reasons he helped start the “Writing The Code” program at MIT’s Sloan School of Management last fall.

Branch, who holds the post of diversity and belonging leader at the school, bumped into Michael Packard, foundation director of PGA REACH New England, at an analytics conference a couple of years ago. A light-bulb moment followed.

“Minority students could have a leg up if introduced to the game before they needed to play the game in the future,” Branch said.

More than 30 students participated in an inaugural event last fall that gave them a chance to talk to alumni who believe being around the game made a direct impact in their lives – alumni like Bowie, 51, who was at Texas Instruments in the late 1990s when he was introduced to golf. The facilitators? A group of managers, most of whom, like Bowie, were Black.

“I was like, “˜golf’? I’m from Alabama, I grew up playing football and basketball and baseball,'” Bowie says.

He is now a managing partner at MSAAD Partners, which provides technical assistance to promote entrepreneurship and innovation in communities of color. Golf, Bowie says, has provided a connective tissue for him and a handful of former classmates who convene for yearly getaways. “People are getting hired on those trips,” he says.

That’s one of the reasons Bowie is intent on making sure his daughters understand the difference between a five-iron and a fairway wood.

“If they’re golfers,” he says, “it’s going to open up more doors for them.”

___

Associated Press Sports Writer Will Graves is based in Pittsburgh. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WillGravesAP