<b>Sathnam Sanghera:</b> Business of golf jargon

If you’re getting tired of the golf puns still being generated as a result of the Tiger Woods story — e.g., “Tiger had me in the rough” (News of the World), “Wife needs to putt Tiger in his place” (Daily Mirror), “Teed-off cops to probe Tiger’s injuries” (The Sun) — just thank your lucky stars you don’t work in business. Because golf analogies are, if you forgive yet another pun, par for the course in corporate life.

Indeed, of all the parallels commonly drawn in the corporate world — business as warfare, as Shakespeare, as gardening, as hostage negotiation, as motorised toilet-bowl racing — golf is by far the most common. Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, once used golf to make a point about the inability of central banks to control currency rates for long (“A golf pro may be able to straighten out my swing, but he will never get me to be able to hit the ball 300 yards down the middle of the fairway”).

Professors Gerard Seijts and Gary Latham have used a golf analogy to explain why it is counterproductive to set performance goals without also promoting “learning goals” (“In short, the novice golfer must learn how to play the game before becoming concerned with attaining a challenging performance outcome, e.g., a score of 95”).

Accenture, the consultancy firm, has, of course, been using Tiger Woods in its advertising for years (“We know what it takes to be a Tiger”).

An internet search reveals golf being used by others to explain everything from the importance of hiring PR professionals (“You turn to a consultancy like you would turn to a golf pro — it may be expensive, but you learn faster and better in the end”), to the importance of preparation (“Practise a lot, work to improve your game one stroke at a time, and before you know it, you just may find yourself playing in the ‘US Open’ of your industry”) and the manufacturing accuracy needed to make microchips (“The equivalent of hitting a hole in one 100 per cent of the time from 18 miles away”).

The popularity of the references probably comes down to the fact that golf is more than just a game to many managers. It’s a way of networking. It’s a way of not going home. It’s a way of reinforcing the old boy network. Which is part of the reason I’ve always hated smug corporate references to it. But I’ve found my position softening towards it in the light of the recent Tiger Woods coverage and other dark revelations about the sport. I now think there may be something to the comparison, beyond the fact that most offices, like golf clubs, do not permit the wearing of jeans, camouflage trousers or shell suits. For example:

 

Like business, golf is a man’s world. Of course, there is a women’s game, with a Ladies Professional Golf Association, a Ladies European Tour, and a Ladies’ Golf Union, but just as the progress of women is limited by a glass ceiling in business, women’s golf is overshadowed by the glitziness of its male counterpart.

In fact, while British golf clubs can no longer legally ban women members from their bars or discriminate in any other way on gender grounds, until just two years ago, there were still golf clubs that gave female members limited access to club facilities or barred them from the running of the club. 

Like business, golf has an impenetrable language of its own. Just as it is impossible to get through a business meeting without hearing nonsensical references to “synergies” and “paradigm shifts”, it’s impossible to get through a chat with a golf nut without opaque, bewildering references to “handicaps”, “eagles” and “fairways”. Of the many golf analogies I’ve come across while researching this piece, I’ve only understood a tiny portion. Here, for instance, we have Georga Pipas, a Ford sales analyst, saying, “We bogeyed April”. Is that good or bad? Where I come from, a bogey is a bad thing. But maybe it isn’t in golf? Here we have a stockbroker saying about falling stock prices: “To use a golf analogy, I’d like to take a couple of mulligans.” What the hell is a mulligan? Even Warren Buffett, usually a clear thinker and speaker, has fallen victim, remarking in a 2001 letter: “In golf, my score is frequently below par on a pro forma basis.” Eh? 
 

Like business, golf is a total mystery to outsiders. I’m not a rugby fan, but don’t mind watching the occasional game. Superbike racing does nothing for me, but I can understand why others do. Golf, however, remains a total enigma. I’ve tried playing it, tried watching it, but could no more explain its appeal than explain how the Large Hadron Collider works. Business sparks similar confusion in outsiders. 
 

Like business, golf is not as honourable as it thinks. It’s not uncommon to hear keen golfers talk about how they play “a game of honour”, how there are times when pros relinquish the chance to win for sporting and moral reasons, in the same way that corporations like to bang on about ethics and CSR (corporate social responsibility). But we’ve all learnt in recent years that business is not as clean as it claims to be, and the same seems to be true about golf. I’m not thinking here solely about the tarnishing of Tigers Woods’ image, but of a survey commissioned a few years ago by Starwood Hotels and Resorts in America, which found that 82 per cent of 401 corporate executives admitted to cheating on the links. Behaviour that can safely be declared below par.

www.sathnam.com