Business Follows the Golfer

IN fact and fiction, U.S. executives have always belonged to country clubs, and used them as much for business profit as weekend pleasure. But in today's expense-account economy, country clubs are assuming a new importance to established businessmen and young executives. With the spectacular postwar rise of golf, more and more companies are taking out country-club memberships for their men, both as a means of giving them a tax-free pay boost and as a sound business maneuver. There are few better ways for businessmen to develop new contacts, keep customers happy, sell their products and themselves.

In Los Angeles, one accountant deducted $20,000 in golf-club fees as business expenses over a period of years; when the Internal Revenue Service protested that the club was for pleasure, he won his case by proving that he could not even play golf. A lawyer won his case for a heavy deduction by proving that his country-club activities had a direct effect on his income. Furthermore, he hated playing golf.

Even the smallest companies like to have at least one country-clubber on their staff. One small Boston advertising firm has a low-70s golfer whose only job is to play with prospective customers, softening them up for the eventual sales pitch from another member of the firm. Bigger corporations may have a dozen memberships to hand out ta their executives, chart their plan of attack as carefully as any sales campaign. They spread their men around in different clubs covering every customer market, make sure to put each man in the club where he can do the most good, upgrade the good producers. They look for his natural customers and avoid places where tight cliques make it impossible for a new man to make headway.

In a club, the young executive finds there are strict dos and don'ts. In some, second, third, and fourth-rank clubs, a member can get away with making a direct pitch for business, talk shop either on the greens or in the locker room. But at front-rank clubs, the hustler is shunned like the plague. The good clubs are hard to get into and expensive (up to $6,000 for the initiation fee alone), and most members resent an obvious mixing of business with pleasure.

The best approach is the indirect one in which the young executive never talks shop, never seems to be selling anything. Instead, he lets things take their natural course, picks up a game in the occasional twosome or threesome, makes polite conversation, may later offer to buy a drink, play a hand of cards, swap a story or two. Meanwhile, his wife is getting to know the other wives, his children are busy making friends in the club swimming pool. Gradually, if he plays a good game, he gets to be known, more people want to play with him, and he expands his circle of friends. Eventually, it pays off in dozens of direct and indirect ways. One young Milwaukee advertising man, for example, got himself on a club committee, worked so hard and so well for the committee chairman that he later landed a $300,000 account from the chairman's company.

Contrary to accepted belief, the young executive-golfer seldom dubs his shots to butter up a prospective customer. The true golf addict, whether he is a company president or a minor purchasing agent, likes nothing better than watching--and getting beaten by --a crackerjack golfer. In Denver, Investment Banker Harry Buchenau Jr., who shoots a good game, estimates that fully 50% of his business comes from friends who enjoy playing golf with him. Says he: "Recently a friend called me to make up a foursome. I told him I couldn't play because I had a quota of stock to sell. He said, 'Forget it; come on along. I'll take a third of it and we'll unload the rest on the other two.' "

At times, a businessman can sew up a client merely by fixing him up with a memorable game at his club. The one golfer everyone wants to play with is President Eisenhower, who tees off at Burning Tree. Every U.S. golfer dreams that some day he may be called upon to fill out a foursome with Ike. At Burning Tree, Firestone Lobbyist Thomas Belshe was once entertaining two Firestone executives when the call went out that the President needed two to make up his foursome. Before the Firestone men knew it, Belshe, who often plays with Ike, had arranged for his two astounded clients to whack the ball around with the President.

Some businessmen still feel that business and country clubs should not be mixed. But for most businessmen, the country club is as important a part of U.S. business as the adding machine. Says a Los Angeles lawyer: "The club is the meeting place, and any time you throw together men who have something to sell and men who have something to buy, deals will be opened and closed. This isn't the club system . . . It's human nature."

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