Women Drivers

Corporate women are starting to move their office jobs out onto the fairway - with great results.

For Tracey Durand, wielding a golf club is a great way to stand out in a crowd. A few years ago, Durand, a lawyer at McMillan Binch in Toronto, was asked to play at a firm golf day where women clients were paired up with women lawyers of similar skill levels. “I was one of four or five women at an event of about 200 people,” she says.

Since then, Durand’s game has improved considerably. So has her rapport with clients - male and female. “I find that clients open up more on the golf course.” says Durand. “It’s a longer period of time than a lunch meeting, and when you spend three or four hours with someone on a golf course, it’s amazing the things you get to talk about - you can let your hair down a bit.”

“I find that clients open up more on the golf course.” says Durand. “It’s a longer period of time than a lunch meeting, and when you spend three or four hours with someone on a golf course, it’s amazing the things you get to talk about - you can let your hair down a bit.”

Durand is one of many corporate women to realize that by trying her hand at golf, she can build her clout. Richard Doyle, general manager of the Canadian Professional Golfers’ Association of Ontario says he is seeing more and more sales managers, women from the financial services industry and women who work in male-dominated fields such as engineering and architecture take to the fairways. 

And the popularity of the sport is still growing; while in 1990 only 18% of all golfers were women, that total has now grown to 27%.To respond to this new demand, a number of golf clubs are setting up classes specifically designed for corporate women. Tracey Luel, director of women’s golf at Score Golf, a Toronto-based golf marketer, says that she regularly gets calls from women wanting to know where they can get some basic golf instruction. “A woman will phone and say, “I’ve got a corporate golf tournament in four weeks - help me!” says Luel. So persistent were the calls, that Score Golf set up half-day golf lessons for women at 12 courses across the country. For $85, women receive four hours of instruction from a CPGA professional, where they learn the basic stance, grip, etiquette and how to get started. Score Golf also offers full day, customized corporate packages where, for $5,500, a woman can treat 14 clients to a breakfast or lunch, four hours of instruction and nine holes of golf. Luel suggests that treating another novice to a half-hour lesson at the driving range is a good way to strengthen your business relationship and improve your game at the same time.

Michael Merrall, the Toronto-based managing director for sports marketing firm International Management Group, is just one of a number of employers who seems to agree with Luel. Last year, Merrall, a golfing enthusiast himself, signed off on $1,700 worth of lessons for four of IMG’s women executives at King’s Health Centre in downtown Toronto. “Our male executives would regularly use any opportunity to golf with clients, but the women didn’t have the chance.” says Merrall. “It wasn’t because they weren’t allowed to go; they just didn’t know how to play. There’s a barrier there that society has put up, so we simply removed the barrier.” Merrall put just one caveat on the deal; if the executives took the lessons, they had to commit to actually taking clients out on the course. “It sounds funny, saying, “Get out of the office and go golfing.” But that’s essentially what I said. And believe me, they have!

Source: Canadian Women Golfer, Fall 1998.