Play like a tiger, schmooze like a pro

GOLF REVIEW - BY ANGELA PRIESTLEY

Relax for a moment and take a swing; it may just help your career. Angela Priestley reports

Through the trees, along the fairway, across the pond; the flight of a golf ball can be a moment of great skill and precision remembered long into the future. One such moment still fresh in the memory rests with Tiger Woods as he birdied the 18th to force a playoff in the 2008 US Open. That shot was a point of discussion around water coolers for days – and perhaps even for years to come there will be mutterings of: “Remember the bad knee, the fight to the end, and his final shot for victory?”

Just like the moments made by a sporting pro, memories can also be generated by the fluke shot on the 9th at a client golf day, or that birdie shot from across the lake that Greg Norman once hit into the drink three times at a major international tournament. These moments are the bonding points between golf team members and competitors, as well as the talking points in the office or over a glass of wine for years to come.

That’s why golf is the sport of business and for lawyers, a useful tool for getting ahead. A good four to five hours can exist between you, your colleagues, your clients and a game of golf. That’s time in the outdoors, a dose of friendly competition and a clean slate for conversation that during play at least, happens without an alcoholic beverage in sight. Pure sportsmanship alone makes a day on the green a bonding experience that might just assist in forming those key relationships you’ve been waiting for.

But why, exactly, do law and golf exist like two peas in a pod? According to Craig Brown, author of Why Lawyers Love Golf, it’s the physical and intellectual mix of challenges that persuade lawyers to make the game a part of both their social and career life.

But, surely, the conversations that run on a golf course could run just as deep at a fancy restaurant? Not necessarily, says Brown in his book. Golf as an activity finds a special place with lawyers, because the sport itself presents a disproportional number of lawsuits. Don’t believe it? Try googling lawsuit and golf and see some of the cases that have emerged from lawyers playing the sport.

“Some of the cases form an interesting and important part of golf history, and some involve well-known players and places, but most of the cases involve ordinary golfers and everyday golf course occurrences,” Brown said.

Away from a link between lawsuits and golf, membership at an exclusive golf club may appear to some a pretentious and expensive waste of time. While to others, the very same membership may exist as a means of reaffirming contacts with clients, colleagues and even networks outside of work – accountants, doctors, plumbers, architects, builders – that may just one day come in handy.

All square on the career and leisure fronts

Geoff Wood, a partner at Mallesons Stephen Jaques says golf and the law have been inextricably linked for him for a good part of his long career. Starting as a summer clerk at Freehills , he says he can’t remember talking about golf in the first 11 years as a lawyer, but that all changed when he moved over to Blake Dawson .

“I found that people just kept talking about golf and I thought: ‘I’m going to have to take this game up or I’ll have nothing to talk to these guys about’,” Wood says. “So I did, and I got bitten by the bug.”

Meanwhile, Peter Sinn, avid golfer and partner at Middletons , says it’s the time factor of a golf game that makes it an attractive option. “Golf takes time, and once you get out there with a group of people you get to know a lot about them in those hours.”

But Sinn does admit to finding situations in law where an obsession with golf is not necessarily a good thing. “When I was a managing partner of a small firm,” he says, “I hired this general manager and I didn’t play golf at the time, but one of the key things on his application was that his handicap was four.”

To Sinn, the handicap sounded impressive but as a non-golfer at the time, he didn’t really know what it meant. “I told my partners I had hired him and that his golf handicap was four and they looked at me in horror and said: ‘Do you realise that he’d have to play at least three or four times a week to have that?’ They were right, he didn’t turn out to be a good general manager because he spent too much time playing golf!”

A worthwhile discussion point

Sinn later moved into golfing circles because of the lure of the business contacts, before eventually getting hooked on the sport. Like Wood, Sinn found himself in situations where golf became the centre of conversation – so it was necessary to learn the sport – a move that his since proven worthwhile.

“I’ve met people through golf and then they’ve used me for work, and put me in a position to get deals and referrals,” he says. “You get to know people on the golf course and they speak to each other in good terms. I always think that’s why I let them win, but that’s not necessarily true.”

Eagles for the legal profession

While Wood says the culture of golf was strong at Blake Dawson, Craig Boyle, a current senior associate at the firm, says it’s a theme he finds is relevant to the legal profession in general. “It’s strong at firms and with people at the bar. It is something in common that you can have with people, rather than just the technical side of work,” he says.

Boyle can’t confirm if it has helped his career or not, but will say that it’s on the golf course that he’s made some meaningful contacts. “Where it helps is in terms of building relationships – perhaps internally with partners you work with or externally, with clients,” he says. “The benefit is that it gives you something to relate to people with, rather than just the strict working relationship. The human side of things can definitely help in the professional sense.”

Wood agrees: “You can really have some of your most effective conversations with clients away from mobile phones and other distractions when you’re walking down the fairway on a golf day.”

As for schmoozing clients, Wood doesn’t believe it will work for everyone but that it does help in networking with people who are already avid golfers. “These golf days (client days held by law firms) are played on really nice courses and, sometimes, people haven’t played those before,” he says. “It’s an enticement to the clients to give them a chance to get on a course like that.”

It can be an expensive day, though, and not always the most productive. Sinn says: “I think with clients you don’t know very well, you need to do something else to get a bit of grounding before stepping into golf, especially if you’re not a great golfer!”

So what exactly is discussed on the green? Boyle says: “Discussion can vary from golf, to cricket to football to something that is actually work-related. The topics of conversation are extremely broad.”

Wood meanwhile, finds that some days all you do it talk about golf: “Other times, though, it’s a good chance to catch up on what a client has been doing, or a good way to put a couple of clients together who are interested in networking.”

One for the books

Golf experiences, originally for purposes of work, have also proven extremely worthwhile for Wood in a leisure sense. When he’d just started out with the sport, a senior partner at the Blake Dawson Melbourne office took him to the Royal Melbourne to have a hit. “As a brand new 27 handicapper it was a bit daunting,” he said. “On the second hole, on the famous west course at Royal Melbourne, I managed to eagle it – a three of a par five, putting the ball in the hole from 160 metres and watching it all this way. This poor chap had never birdied that hole in 20 years of membership and here I was, a Sydney upstart and I eagled it!”

Eagle it he did, and it was an experience –a moment – that lived on for many years to come. Later, on a plane to Canberra, Wood entered a competition he found in an Ansette magazine asking entrants to describe their most memorable golf experience in 25 words or less. Using his Royal Melbourne experience as the moment, he won an all-expenses first-class trip to London to play in the program at the Alfred Dunhill Cup on the old course at St Andrews. “There I was, finding myself on the first tee in front of all these crowds teeing off with Mark McNulty,” says Wood. “All thanks to my Melbourne partner having got me down there.”

A moment surely, that will live on in time. Sourced on the golf course, remembered by legal circles, it’s yet another sporting story to colour an impressive legal career.

4-Jul-2008

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