Women See Green in Linking Golf, Work

Pat Richards, a vice president at City National Bank in Oxnard, couldn’t have talked her way into five minutes with the CEO of a leading company in his office. But at a charity golf tournament, she found herself with four hours to chat with the man--and a significant new name to add to her Rolodex.

She had just made the business equivalent of a birdie.

“Golf is really opening doors for me,” Richards said. “It makes it easier to get into that world.”

In a county lush with golf courses and charity golf tournaments, Ventura County businesswomen have discovered in increasing numbers that business happens outside the boardroom as well as in it.

And where golf was once a male networking bastion, a growing number of women are crashing the grass ceiling.

Nationally, women make up only 22% of all golfers, but they compose 39% of those just taking up the sport, according to the National Golf Foundation. Their numbers have grown 24% in the last decade, to about 5.7 million.

The average woman golfer is older and wealthier than the average male golfer.

“I think what’s happening is that they’re really feeling the need to climb the corporate ladder,” said Lisa Grissom, a golf pro at Los Posas Country Club in Camarillo who left the corporate world for the fairway several years ago. “Once [my colleagues] found out I could play golf, for instance, it really opened things up for me.”

It’s only natural that after moving into the once male-dominated boardrooms, women would follow men into the unofficial areas where business relationships are often cemented, experts said.

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Most people don’t hammer out deals on the seventh hole, but spending time on the course allows a businesswoman to break the ice and build a professional relationship with a prospective client or boss.

“If you know someone you think might be a good prospect, you find someone who knows them and invite them to play,” said Sue Chadwick, a senior vice president in charge of Santa Barbara Bank & Trust’s Ventura County branches. “You learn a lot about their personality. You find out what schools they went to, what sports they like to play.”

Plus, you discover if a potential client or boss can control his temper. You’ll know if he treats women with respect. You’ll find out if he cheats under pressure.

But it can be daunting to take that first step onto the green. From the outside, golf has a Byzantine set of rules of etiquette that aren’t necessarily intuitive. Add the fact that a woman will be joining men who have probably been playing for years, and stepping onto the course can be intimidating.

“It can be scary,” Grissom said. “It’s a challenging game, and the women frankly don’t want to embarrass themselves. They want to come in knowing what they’re doing.”

That was the case for Sylvia Munoz Schnopp, who found herself at first relegated to registering golfers when AT&T; Wireless of Camarillo held its charity tournament.

But she wanted to do more. She knew that the game “was an advantage men have,” said Schnopp, the company’s communications director. “I was a manager as well, and I really wanted to tap into that.”

So Schnopp took lessons and soon found herself organizing a yearly women’s tournament benefiting Interface Children Family Services.

Women are much more likely to take lessons than men, who have an “ego thing,” Grissom said. According to a study by the National Golf Foundation, about 35% of female golfers are currently taking lessons, compared with about 14% of men. And 61% of women have taken lessons, compared with only 43% of men.

That’s not the only difference.

“There’s a whole other Ten Commandments of business golf when it comes to male-female relationships,” said Nancy Oliver of Palm Beach, Fla., the founder of the Executive Women’s Golf Assn. “Men tend to be used to playing other men. They think, ‘There’s a woman in our group. Will we have to adjust our behavior? Should she drive the cart? Should I? Who tees off first?’ ”

But golfers in this county say that if they can handle their relationships in the office, the golf course should be no problem.

Who drives the cart? Who cares?

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“I let the person drive who knows the course,” said Penny Bohannon, the president of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn.

Of more concern for women--and one that men don’t seem to share--is that doing business on the golf course can feel like cheating or playing hooky from their real, busy lives.

“A lot of women don’t feel the importance of going out and playing golf,” Bohannon said. “I haven’t made the connection with golf and business. [But] I know it’s a way of life.”

Further, Grissom said, many women already have more responsibilities outside the office than men. They take care of the kids, the house and the dinner, and many women fear they don’t have time for golf.

But some of them are making the time, as they see the influence the sport can have on their careers, Grissom said.

“I bet there are a lot of guys who would make the comment, ‘If I don’t know how to play golf, I could be left out of the network,’ ” she said. “It’s just taken women a little longer to catch on.”