Putt For Dough

By Ann Blackman/Washington

When Donna Shalala became chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1988, the school's alumni and friends told her that in order to raise $400 million for a capital campaign, she would have to learn to play golf. There was no substitute, it seemed, for hitting up potential donors on the links. The university arranged for her to go to golf school for a week. "I had never had a golf club in my hand," says Shalala, now Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services--and one of the few Cabinet officers with a low enough handicap to play with President Bill Clinton. "Today a lot of people I schmooze with, I schmooze with on a golf course."

Shalala is by no means the lone woman out there on the fairway, at least not anymore. Networking on the golf course, long a part of doing business for male executives, has in recent years become par for the course for women. More than a fifth of the 26.5 million Americans who play golf are women--an increase of 24% over the past decade, according to the National Golf Foundation in Jupiter, Fla. And the barriers that once kept them off the links during prime tee times (when the deals get done) have been dropping like Annika Sorenstam's putts. The result: one of the last bastions of old-boy networking has got into synch with the oncoming 21st century.

Not only are women playing more, they are also taking it seriously, to judge by the growing numbers attending golf school. "When we first started, we were getting mostly country-club wives," says Marlene Floyd, sister of tour veteran Ray Floyd and founder of a women-only golf school in Hilton Head, S.C. "But in the past three or four years, the number of career women who are coming for professional reasons has grown to about 60% of our business. We're seeing a lot of stockbrokers, bankers, saleswomen, accountants and lawyers, who are taking their vacation with us to learn golf."

Today's female golfer is likely to be a full-time careerist who sees the green as an extension of her office. "I have got lots of new customers as a result of playing golf," says Lois Rice, 59, an executive vice president of Wells Fargo Bank in Los Angeles. A survey this year by the Executive Women's Golf Association in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., found that its 13,000 members had an average salary of $78,325. Nearly 60% of respondents held upper-management positions with major corporations. Almost 30% owned their own business.

Take Aileen Rappaport, 53, of Washington, a vice president for Loomis, Sayles & Co., an investment-management firm. Seven years ago, she decided to go to golf school so she could compete with colleagues she saw doing deals over 18 holes. It paid off. "Every time I went out on the course, a deal went down," Rappaport says. "On one of my first outings with a client, I closed a $200 million sale." Several weeks ago (after six sessions at golf school), Rappaport closed a $300 million sale.

The cartpath to equality has not been smooth, however. While golf enthusiasts say the situation has improved in recent years, there are still many private clubs that restrict the hours during which women can play, refuse to allow women to tee off on weekend mornings or do not permit single women to be club members. Tracy Friedman, 49, a television writer from North Hollywood, Calif., was taking Saturday lessons two years ago at Lakeside Golf Club in Burbank when a member invited her to join him for a round. The club pro vetoed the idea. "There was no one on the course, but they wouldn't let women play on Saturdays," Friedman says. Eventually she decided to take lessons elsewhere.

Other women have not been so amenable. In 1990, Midge Martin, then a 65-year-old financial broker, sued the Longmeadow Country Club in Massachusetts for gender discrimination. The club excluded women from voting, prime tee times and the men's grill. In the months that followed, Martin reportedly received threatening phone calls, her crab-apple trees were uprooted from her lawn, and her Himalayan cat, Max, was poisoned. She later reached a settlement with the club, which included $45,000 for her legal fees.

The Longmeadow Country Club has since reformed. Rules are no longer gender biased. Two of the 12 board members are women; last January the club elected its first female president.

In New York, another well-known golfing discrimination case was filed by Long Island art teacher Lee Lowell, who joined the Cedar Brook Golf and Tennis Club in 1988 with her husband. Neither of them saw anything in the club's bylaws that would keep her from playing whenever she wished. But one Saturday morning, Lowell arrived early and was told she had to wait until 1:30 p.m., after all the men had been accommodated. She bridled but obeyed, and came back week after week to face the same treatment. After arguing with her for a few weeks, the starter gave Lowell a Saturday-morning tee time. As Lowell finished the 17th hole and drove her cart to the next tee, three club members, including a ranking member of the golf committee, met her with curses. One picked up her ball and put it in his pocket, shook his finger in her face and threatened, "You will never hit another golf ball again." Another man, she says, urinated in front of her.

Extraordinary as it may seem after that display of incredible vulgarity, the club suspended Lowell for two weeks. She took one member to court, and the judge in November 1989 found the man's actions reprehensible but not criminal. When the club refused to renew the Lowells' membership, the couple brought their case to the New York State Human Rights Commission. In July 1992, the commission found the club had engaged in discrimination. Six years later, Lowell is still awaiting damages. "It wasn't a case of whether or not I worked during the week and could only play on Saturdays like the men," Lowell says today. "It was a matter of equality." Cedar Brook has since mended its ways and become a woman-friendly course.

The atmosphere at most clubs is improving, says Greg Durden, assistant attorney general in charge of civil rights in Florida, one of golf's greatest strongholds. "I think society is beginning to recognize that women have a right to be on the golf course. We have shown these golf [officials] that they were hypocritical snobs. How could they raise their daughters to be doctors and lawyers and then say their daughters can't play with their brothers on Saturday morning?" Linda Brock-Nelson, 56, president of a real estate management company in Scottsdale, Ariz., joined other women members of the Paradise Valley Country Club to protest the club's restricted women's tee times. That was in 1994, and the club has since changed its policies. "I think they are a lot more sensitive than they used to be," says Brock-Nelson, an 18 handicapper. "They see that when these cases go to court, the good ole boys' clubs lose."

With the gender wars fading, players can focus on one of golf's joys: that people of different skill levels can play together and talk about something other than when or where they're allowed to tee off. Donna Dieterle, 48, a senior vice president of First Union National Bank, plays at Minisceongo Golf Club in Pomona, N.Y., where there are no rules about women, and she plays regularly with clients and colleagues. "I haven't closed any deals on the course," she allows, "but it's a very good opportunity to have someone's undivided attention." That is certainly what appeals to Donna Shalala when she gets in a round with her boss.

--Reported by Greg Aunapu/Miami, Deborah Edler Brown/Los Angeles and Nadya Labi/New York

With reporting by Greg Aunapu/Miami, Deborah Edler Brown/ Los Angeles and Nadya Labi/New York