Can you play too much golf?

How nemesis always follows hubris

Just over twenty years ago I was propositioned at a party. Not in the way you’re thinking, though. The proposal came from Emma Tucker, at the time the editor of Weekend FT, the Saturday edition of the British newspaper most widely read by American golfers. Her suggestion was that I should write a golf column in her paper.

This was attractive because I’d been writing about golf for a while in Country Life, the British weekly magazine for which Bernard Darwin was golf correspondent for over fifty years. Weekend FT offered an international readership. But I already had a demanding day job so I hesitated. Despite this Emma persisted so I agreed to give it a go on the basis it would only be once a month.

I rang former European Ryder Cup Captain Bernard Gallacher, with whom I used to play, eager to tell him the news. The first media pass I ever had for an event for in the US was for the 1995 Ryder Cup at Oak Hill. On the final day there, almost certainly in breach of journalistic convention, I hugged Bernard on the eighteenth green when Europe completed its surprise comeback.

On the phone Bernard simply laughed and said “Well, Tim, I certainly hope it’s not going to be an instructional column”. He needn’t have worried. There was never any danger of that.

The day after my first column was published Emma called to say she liked it and would I write one every second Saturday. By now I was hooked. She was a wonderful editor to work for and her subsequent success, leading to her appointment in 2022 as the first woman to edit the Wall Street Journal, is richly deserved.

I toyed with asking Emma if I could explain to WSJ readers how activity on the golf course can be a source of valuable intelligence for the financial markets but quickly sensed she didn’t need a Brit to do that. Since this intel remains almost universally overlooked, now is the time to reveal the secret.

I first discovered it when playing at Deepdale one day in early September 2007. After a round with my host and his two very jolly friends we all enjoyed a convivial lunch under a green and white striped awning on the beautiful terrace overlooking the first tee. Our noisy laughter contrasted with the gloomy silence at a nearby table where Merrill Lynch boss Stan O’Neal was eating.

Of course, his sombre demeanour could have been because he was recalling a putt which had lipped out on the eighteenth. If so, it wouldn’t have cost him the match because his game, like his lunch, had taken place without a companion.

Maybe, therefore, his thoughts were straying to Merrill’s recent $7.9 billion bad debt write-off caused by its over-exposure to the downturn in the US housing market and the record loan defaults in the sub-prime mortgage sector. Having single handedly driven Merrill into the ground, O’Neal quit as CEO a few weeks later.

Any pain this caused him would have been eased by his severance package, a trifling $161 million. Even the loss of his exclusive private lift at the office, so useful if mixing with colleagues who actually knew how to run the business was awkward, and the ignominy of being CNBC’s list of the “Worst American CEO’s of All Time” might be bearable at that price. Had he been a professional golfer he certainly would have been front of the queue to join LIV.

Now we must come to the heart of the matter. In 2007 O’Neal played golf on twenty days in late August and early September. In one sense it was clearly time well spent because his handicap fell from 10.2 to 7.7. This interesting information was gleaned from the Golf Handicap Information Network, which is run by the United States Golf Association.

It’s available because most Americans record a score every time they play and tap it into a locker room screen as soon as they come off the course. At the equivalent moment in Britain the average golfer heads straight for a drink, hoping to forget about the disasters that occurred on the course.

Whether all this golf was good for Merrill’s business is another matter. Let’s return to the connection between golf and the financial markets. Another bank which took a caning at this time - and remember we’re talking about early autumn 2007, before the very worst effects of the financial crisis were felt - was Bear Stearns. There CEO Jimmy Cayne found time to squeeze in thirteen rounds in the month of June alone, though his handicap remained in double figures.

What a great time important clients of these institutions must have had, being entertained at exclusive clubs, at any rate until the music stopped. Reputationally, however, Cayne fared no better than O’Neal. Time magazine reported that of all the CEO’s who “screwed up Wall Street….none seemed more asleep at the switch than Cayne.”

The time spent on golf by O’Neal and Cayne contrasts starkly with Lloyd Blankfein when he was CEO of Goldman Sachs. By the start of December 2007 it appears he’d only played one round all year. Furthermore, earlier in his career he’d shown meticulous concern for accuracy, willingness to confront bad news and an ability to handle big numbers, by posting a score of 122 at Manhattan Woods in 2001. Those qualities surely helped propel him to the top job.

A casual or ill-informed investor, ignorant of the benefits of very frequent golf and perhaps nursing losses like those suffered by Bear Stearns shareholders when it was sold to JP Morgan Chase early in 2008 at a price 94 per cent below its January 2007 level, might wonder if one way to avoid multibillion write-offs from the balance sheet would be for bosses to spend more time in the office.

Be that as it may, the world today seems an exceptionally uncertain, if not downright dangerous place right now. More voters will go to the polls in 2024 than in any previous calendar year and the outcome of elections in America, Europe, Asia and Africa are hard to predict. They will also be far reaching in impact. Wars are also raging in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Maybe therefore, before investing in or lending to any businesses, it’s worth joining the USGA. That way you can check the golfing performance, and particularly the number of rounds played by the top management.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

This weekend the US Women’s Open, widely considered the most important women’s major, is under way. Regrettably it struggles to get as much tv coverage as it deserves even though watching the rhythmical swings of the top women players can teach struggling mid-handicappers much more than their male counterparts.

Subscribers to these posts will know I don’t believe it’s possible to understand what’s happening in a golf tournament simply by watching it on tv if you’ve never played the course it’s being played at.

So, as I’ve not been to Lancaster Country Club, I won’t comment on either the play or the course. But every fan in the world must have sympathised with Nelly Karda as her ball finished in the water three times as she piled up a ten at the par three twelfth hole (her third because of the two tee start).

Coming into this event as hot favourite on the back of an incredible run of six wins in her last seven events the pundits were all saying that she was the one the field had to beat. There can have been few swifter or more painful reminders of how, in golf, hubris is pursued by nemesis as relentlessly as the human soul is chased in The Hound of Heaven, Francis Thompson’s powerful 1890 poem.

Not that Korda herself is guilty of hubris. Far from it. Her level headed approach and good pace of play are both exemplary. I’m sure it won’t ne long before she’s back in the winner’s circle.

The half way leaderboard contains a significant number of Asians. I wouldn’t be surprised if, within the next decade we see Asian men matching the success of their womenfolk.