Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Golf

They say a lot of business is done on the golf course. However, I wouldn't exactly know given that I've never played the game...or even gone to the driving range. My former boss, who is just over 70 years, played anytime he could. He'd often return to the office and tell me to setup a new account for a new client or ready transfer instructions for an extra $1 million into someone's account.

Last week in my Hot Topics in Finance course we had a speaker from The Coca-Cola Company. Marie is head of Mergers and Acquisitions as well as a Darden grad. After the class, I attended lunch with Marie and somehow we started discussing golf. She thought that golf should be a business school elective at Darden. While my professor noted that it would never get approved, she stressed the importance of golf in the business world, especially for women.

Ironically, I have my third golf lesson this Thursday. NAWMBA (National Association of Women MBAs) put together groups of 12 people (max) for golf lessons at a local country club. We started with putting, moved to chipping and will finish with a full swing during the last two weeks. Granted, I'm not ready to go play a course, though I do vaguely understand the motions and how to hold a golf club. Further, I know that sand pits are actually called bunkers and all water is deemed water hazard. I can even differentiate between rough and green. While it will still take a lot of practice to get on a full course, maybe my brother's girlfriend, who coached college prep golf until 6 months ago, will provide some free lessons!

4 comments:

Julie said...

Best thing I ever did when I started golfing was play "best ball". Just put your ball wherever the furthest ball landed and go from there. (Of course, I haven't gotten past this stage, but it takes a lot of stress out of the process... also, use cheap balls you don't mind losing!)

Anonymous said...

This is a great post!
- avid golfer and bschool applicant

Anonymous said...

The sand pits are more commonly referred to as sand traps.

N. Nagajyothi said...

I just ran across your blog today. Congratulations on joining Darden School of Business. I'm planning on applying to business school in the near future. And so reading about your experiences at Darden has inspired me.I was excited knowing the correlation between Golf and Business.

I've been reading lots of MBA blogs recently and have a suggestion for how this blog can reach to many other needful B-school applicants. Beat The GMAT, which is a very active GMAT/MBA site, recently launched a blog directory (http://www.beatthegmat.com/blogs/all) to promote MBA blogs. If you add your blog to their blog directory, a lot more people like me will find your blog!

Please keep posting great stuff!