18 Holes of Hell


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By Ken Hegan
Published: BCBusiness magazine, May 2004

I hate golf with a vengeance. And I inherited this hatred from my doggedly independent father. In the early 1960s Dad was a draftsman in the Canadian National Railroad's head office in Vancouver. "People were getting promoted ahead of me because they played golf with the boss," my Dad would tell me later. "And they didn't have the knowledge or experience that I had," he said. "Same thing with the Masons. My boss asked me to join the Masons quite a few times. I always said no. And I couldn't help but notice that the men who did become Masons, who did golf with the boss, kept passing me."

After five years of getting nowhere in the company Dad finally quit CN in disgust. He and my mother moved to the desert town of Kamloops where he found work as a teacher. Since he couldn't afford a fancy golf-exec house on Kamloops' tony south shore, we settled in a blue-collar suburb with a perfect view of the Weyerhaeuser pulp mill's relentlessly belching smoke stack.

As a constant reminder of Dad's refusal to be railroaded into playing golf, our neighbourhood was flanked by CN and CP train tracks on either side. The train conductors blared their horns all night as they rumbled past the nearby oil refinery, saw mill, airport, and rusted abandoned cars that City Hall used to shore up the banks of our polluted Thompson River.

If you lived in Kamloops and actually had some money, you inevitably drove through my neighbourhood to get to the Kamloops Golf and Country Club. When I was growing up, their golf course was the lone green oasis in our sweat-stained city of industry. On sunny days I'd watch the fancy sedans roaring by. I remember baby blue Lincoln Continentals with padded vinyl roofs. Dark brown Chrysler Cordobas with plush bucket seats wrapped in rich Corinthian leather. Wide-body El Dorado convertibles with V8 engines you could steer with your pinky finger. All driven by lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, sales reps and middle managers who were racing to hit the links. I'd grin and wave. Sometimes they'd even wave back as they flicked cigar butts at my head.

By the Reagan era, the Republican-fuelled golf craze was in full swing. All the cool kids on my street either played golf or worked at the golf course. To steer me away from golf, my Dad encouraged me to pursue individual sports like swimming and running. But by ninth grade the peer pressure to play golf was unbearable. I finally caved in, borrowed some clubs and played 18 holes with some guys from the 'hood. I was instantly pathetic and hated golf on contact. Golf stole six hours off my life that I'll never get back. I dragged my skinny butt from divot to divot, suffered a wicked sunburn and blushed at my friends' laughter when a bird shat down my neck. My friends called me The Unknown Retardo, a nickname that stuck to me like herpes all the way through junior high.

Golf, I realized, was a pesticidal waste of time. A torturous habit, where the worse you are, the longer it takes you to finish. My buddy David Christopher, a Vancouver-based recruiter for 1-800-GOT JUNK and a committed non-golfer, agrees. As he points out, "If you suck, you get more golf for your money. The problem with the economy of golf is that the better you are, the more money you pay per stroke," he notes. "Why is golf, such a backward economic concept, so popular within the business community?"

Worse, golf is a pursuit where, against all sporting logic, overweight men actually excel. Hoto Parker, a golf-avoiding product manager for a local cellphone company, agrees. "Any sport where you can be a giant, beer-guzzling fat fuck and still be a contender for an international title is probably not a sport."

Let's compare it with real sports to see how it stands up. Compared to hockey, golf is as slow and boring as hell and as frustrating as purgatory. Unlike soccer, football, baseball, basketball, cricket and murder ball, golf is a game that forces you to fail all by yourself. Unlike tennis, squash, racquetball, badminton and jai alai, there aren't any walls, fences or boards to stop your balls from bouncing all the way to New Brunswick. And unlike lacrosse, boxing, darts, kick-boxing, cock-fighting and girls' field hockey, when other players call you The Unknown Retardo, you're not allowed to rip their arms off and beat them with the bloody stumps.

Despite a few pathetic 'No Girls Allowed' holdouts -- course officials at Augusta and Muirfield still ban women from competing at their Masters and British Open tournaments -- golf is finally shedding its ugly history of sexism, racism and anti-Semitism (if not its painfully garish apparel). So perhaps golf's worst remaining trait is that it's the only sport that people are pressured to play for the duration of their adult lives.

To test this hypothesis, I asked 200 British Columbians if they've ever been pressured to play golf. I was deluged with responses. Steve Ogden, communications manager at the Sun Peaks ski resort, admits he's been pressured to play golf "numerous times over the years, mostly by people I worked with telling me that it would be good -- underlying hint, 'good for my career' -- to play golf. It bugged me a little that something like playing golf might have an indirect impact on my career." Even wondering about it, he says, is "annoying."

A Burnaby office worker, who refuses to give his name for fear of harming his career, tells this story: "Six years ago, when my buddy and I were starting our careers, we were both exposed to the pressures of playing golf. He, a lawyer, took lessons, bought good clubs, practiced on the weekend and convinced himself (he's a very disciplined guy) that golf was cool. I, on the other hand, said 'This is bullshit and I'm not playing along.' You need the clubs, you need the lessons, you need the clothes, the etiquette, the subtle wrist, the friggin' small talk. . . you need to understand that the sum total worth of your existence is resting on your finesse with a putter." And he concludes, "I hate the sport, the culture, the whole thing. I won't go to the client events, the practice range, nothing." As a result, he says, he's considered an outsider in his own workplace: "It's like being a vegetarian."

Nicholas Racz, a Vancouver film and commercial director, complains that "every golf experience was a forced experience." Virginia Ise, a Vancouver power lifter & ukulele player (I'm not making this up), claims "My sister was a peer-pressured golfer and it actually did advance her career." When I pressed her for details, Ise said her sister is "unwilling to share her story" for fear of exposing "her pathetic climb to the top." Similarly, an Orca Bay exec whom, according to a mutual friend, privately disdains the corporate peer pressure to play golf, refuses to go on record for this story for "fear of being quoted."

Siobhan Flahive, a New Orleans-based textbook editor, observes: "I've edited a few 'how to start your career' type books, and knowing how to play a decent game of golf is one thing that a lot of authors recommend." Golf is a good strategy "to keep you from sticking out as a freak."

In 1998, Indiana's Purdue University teamed up with the Professional Golfers’ Association of America (PGA) to introduce an eight-week business course entitled "Golf: For Business & Life." This M.B.A. level course teaches students how to use the game as an effective business tool (i.e., as a way to ingratiate yourself with your boss and clients). According to the U.S. News & World Report, guest speaker Jay Smith, CEO of an insurance agency in Lafayette, Indiana, bragged to students in the course about how a chat on the links helped him "save 21 insurance accounts worth a half-million bucks." Smith said golfing allowed him to discover the character of his clients and gauge what kind of risk they were. "Taking too many mulligans [i.e., a 'do-over' after a muffed shot] really shows someone's true [cheatin’, scammin’, lazy-ass] character," explained Smith.

Professor Tom Templin, who designed the course, summed up his etiquette tips with this chilling caution: "You walk across someone's line on the green, and they're going to go back to the office and say, "There's no way I'm going to do business with that guy.'" He added that this "reflects a disregard for one's playing partner and may reflect either one's complete ignorance of golf etiquette and one's character relative to one's ability to respect and adhere to certain boundaries/parameters in the business environment." Translation: a dick on the course is a dick in the boardroom.

Like a malignant cancer, the Purdue/PGA course spread to 49 colleges and universities across America. In 2001, the Simon Fraser University's Faculty of Business introduced a free afternoon workshop entitled The Business of Golf. In an SFU News article from the same year, Jane Martin, who was then the coordinator for SFU’s business services, said the one-time workshop (it was dropped the following year, ostensibly due to budget cuts) was "based on the premise that being golf savvy can enhance career advancement." During the workshop, Eddy Kou, a master's student in economics and a member of SFU's varsity golf team, advised students that they could get ahead in the corporate world if they practiced golfing on a driving range or at a pitch and putt. "You don't need to be good," he told them. "There's a certain mentality among those who know the sport, that if you play golf, you're my friend."

But not everyone in SFU's business program is convinced. Dr. Lindsay Meredith, a legendary SFU marketing professor, hates golf with a passion, especially the pressure to play golf to get ahead. "I've been asked to play golf plenty of times. I always say 'No!' and the look I get back is a cross between disappointment and social questionability, like 'What's wrong with you?' '' Dr. Meredith adds that peer-pressured golf does not guarantee success, "not by a long shot." It is, he says, an "idiotic pursuit" leading to a syndrome he dubs "the Psychological Death Spiral. Which is the harder you try, the worse you do, the madder you get, the harder you try, the worse you do. . . ."

Associate dean in the University of Victoria's Faculty of Business, Ralph Huenemann is a non-golfer who says golf "seems extremely boring." Which makes him, of course, correct (other than the 'seems' part). However, at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business, assistant professor Dr. Ronald T. Cenfetelli recommends that all business students march out and buy a natty pair of golf cleats. "All the great CEOs have been golfers: Jack Welch, Larry Ellison, John Gotti," he observes. "How many CEOs do you see playing cricket, hockey or curling? Show me a bowler, and I'll show you a one-way ticket to the mailroom, not the boardroom."

On his MrGolf.com web site, Mr. Golf Etiquette, a.k.a. Jim Corbett, gives elegant protocol lessons to brown-nosing golf whores (my words, not his). When I asked him if someone could win at business without wasting every bloody weekend on the golf course, Mr. Golf Etiquette told me, "One quick way is to somehow arrange a round of golf with the Chairman of the Board and then catch him cheating -- it shouldn't take more than two or three holes. Now the proper way to handle this is to not be confrontational; just be sure he sees you and lift an eyebrow and kind of cock your head to the side with a quizzical look on your face. Your career will start to take off the very next morning."

Clearly golf is a pre-requisite for high-level business success. But what about politics? I fired off surveys to Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell, his councillors, Premier Gordon Campbell, every MLA in B.C., President George W. "now watch this drive" Bush, and the Right Honourable Prime Minister Paul Martin.

I received one reply, from the MLA for Nelson-Creston, Blair Suffredine. When asked, "Have you, or anyone you care about, been pressured to play golf to get ahead in business/politics?" Suffredine replied, "No. I play golf once a year whether I need to or not." My next question was, "I understand B.C. is about to enter a golden decade. In addition to eating leafy greens, should the youth of today learn how to play golf, too? His response: "Yes, anything that will encourage physical activity is a good thing, even if it means playing golf." And finally, "Do you ever autograph balls?"

" Never."

Of all the civic politicians, only Councillor Tim Louis agreed to answer my survey. Now, if you're not familiar with the brilliantly caustic Councillor Louis, he is a 'handicapable' man who flies around City Hall in an automatic wheelchair. With his tiny frame and big piercing eyes, he looks like a jet-propelled Yoda, using his thought-controlled joystick to swoop through our corridors of power. He's intimidating. So I was understandably confused and scared when Councillor Louis asked me to call him back about his golf game. I reviewed my key question for him: Have you even played golf or pretended that you played golf purely to woo votes and seize municipal power? Then I sucked a deep breath and dialled his number:

Me: Hi, Mr. Louis, I'm Ken Hegan from BCBusiness --
Councillor Louis: Right! What can I do for you?
Me: Well, see, I hate golf, Mr. Louis. And I'm asking all sorts of politicians if they've ever been pressured to play golf. Have you ever played --
Councillor Louis: Nope. Never been asked.
Me: Not even, ah, mini-golf?
Councillor: No. Never.
Me: Okay. Um, one more question. Do you think golf is a worthwhile --?
Councillor Louis: No, I don't. Any more questions?
Me: I guess that's it.
Councillor Louis: Then you have a great day there, eh? Bye.

Buoyed by his utter dismissal of the game, I asked 80 golf-hating friends the following question: "If you could improve golf, make it more interesting, how would you do it?" Soon I was swamped with colourful ideas on how to modernize the game. At least six friends invited me to play Disc Golf, also known as Frisbee Golf or Frolf. Others wanted to see Strip Golf, the "Maxim Caddy Team," and sudden death playoffs featuring "actual sudden death."

Musican/composer Ari Wise said he'd be willing to play "Shit Kicker Golf, where the guy with the worst score at the end of 18 holes gets to have the shit kicked out of him by all the other guys playing that round. Erin Mussolum, a documentary producer, said she's "still reliving horrible. slow and tedious golf lessons from when I was 12." However, she could be lured back onto the links to play an extreme game of "Speed Golf," a demanding new version that requires you to "blast through the 18 holes at a full sprint." Janice Hope, a local dance instructor, would be willing to play "night golf with glowing balls or, better yet, balls on fire."

Lynda Brown, executive director of New Media B.C., wants "boutique shops at every hole with complimentary vodka of various flavours. Oh, and everything in pink, please." She could pair up with animation writer Dennis Heaton, who said he could be pressured into a round of golf but only if "regular courses looked like miniature golf courses, but with everything normal size. A full-size sphinx. A full-size windmill, a 40-foot clown that spits your ball out at you." He also wants to "add fire hazards to the sand traps and water hazards" and "release Bengal tigers onto the course."

Not bad, not bad. And let's not forget gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, may he rest in peace. In his final ESPN.com article, Thompson wrote that he woke up his actor friend Bill Murray to tell him, "I've invented a new sport. It's called Shotgun Golf. We will rule the world with this thing." In this savage hybrid of golf and skeet shooting, Thompson decreed that points would be scored "by blasting your opponent's shiny new Titleist out of the air and causing his shot to fail miserably." He observed, "given the mood of this country, being that a lot of people in the mood to play golf are also in the mood to shoot something, I think it would take off like a gigantic fad. . . Shotgun Golf will soon take America by storm. I see it as the first truly violent leisure sport."

My Dad is retired from teaching now. He and Mum are still living happily in my love-filled childhood home. It's a solid house, built from the blueprints Dad drafted back in 1966. By day, Dad is at peace with his life. He plays solitaire, solves crossword puzzles, and pets Brutus, his beloved spaniel mutt. By night, Dad tosses and turns, unable to sleep as the CN trains scream past his window. On nights like those, I bet I could even talk my golf-hating dad into joining me for a cathartic round of Shotgun Golf.