Customer Reviews

Deals on the Green: Lessons on Business and Golf from America's Top Executives

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It is a real pleasure to read a book about business with an easy pace and no pretensions about providing a guaranteed system of success and global market dominance! Yet this book does have important insights for its readers. In fact, they are more important than most people ever learn. Golf has been around for hundreds of years for good reasons. Not only is it a beautiful game, it also is a great way to get to know other people. The old saying is that adversity doesn't build character; it reveals it. In golf every player faces adversity and it is how the golfer handles those issues that reveals who he or she really is to one's fellow competitors.

David Rynecki has had a great journalistic gig that has taken him to some of the best golf venues in the world. These are courses that you or I would have a hard time getting on just to watch a tournament. It has also allowed him to play rounds with top CEOs. In this book he tells some of the stories and distills the lessons of golf as they see them. It is a fun, if certainly not systematic, read.

There are 18 holes in a round of golf and there are 18 chapters (plus a foreword and an introduction) in this book. Each chapter starts with a statement that embodies its intended lesson. They are sometimes illustrations of homespun wisdom such as "don't take yourself too seriously", or some insights about corporate golf not available to regular folks such as "you can play Augusta ... with a little luck", or even stories of business success involving golf such as Ron O'Loughlin and how he made a fortune with plastic cleats and laser link. You can see that the chapters are all different, just as golf holes are different.

If you enjoy golf, even if you are a public course duffer like me, you will understand what the author is getting at. If you have paid attention to people as you play golf, you know that the game is only partly about skill. It is even more about the player's character. Does he observe the rules? Does he make excuses ("I don't know why I am three putting so much today, I NEVER three put")? Is he quick to anger? Is he courteous to his fellow competitors or does he try to throw them to gain an advantage? What kind of shot selection does he make (the safe shot, a shot with reasonable risk, a low percentage shot)? Does he analyze and play the course or does he simply play the shots he is used to playing regardless of what the hole is offering him? And many more.

As the author notes, and every experienced golfer knows, a round of golf will tell you more about a person more quickly than almost any other method of interaction. The author also shows how business is done on a golf course in indirect ways. It is considered poor manners to spoil a round of golf with direct appeals for business. Golf is more about building relationships and building connections between people who can trust each other. If you want to lose any possibility of business with someone, play a round with a coveted client and demonstrate bad character. You will never get the business and never be told why. There are several very good stories about this in the book.

So, if you want to learn about the place of golf in business, this is a good book. If you want to learn some fine lessons for business, this is a good book. If you enjoy golf stories and business anecdotes, this is a good book. Heck, it is just a good book. Enjoy.

Putting The Muscle Back In The Bull Stan O'Neal may be the toughest--some say the most ruthless--CEO in America. Merrill Lynch couldn't be luckier to have him.

By David Rynecki
April 5, 2004

'nough said about the author