Why CEOs and Business People Play Golf

That's not a coincidence. That's a signal.

Most people assume it's about tradition, or old boys networks, or an excuse to get out of the office. Some of that is true. But it misses the real reason golf has outlasted every other "business sport" by decades.

Not a 30-minute coffee. Not a dinner where you're half watching the room. Four uninterrupted hours, walking side by side, with no agenda, no audience, and no escape route. You learn more about a person in one round than you do in six months of meetings.

That's why it works.

A McKinsey study found that 80% of executives believe face to face interaction is critical to long-term business relationships. Golf is one of the few environments left that actually forces it. No phones (or at least, phones feel wrong). No laptops. Just conversation that goes wherever it goes.

Golf doesn't just build relationships. It reveals character.

How does someone react to a bad shot? Do they blame the course, throw a club, or laugh and move on? Do they give themselves favourable lies when they think no one's watching? How do they treat the club staff? How do they handle winning when they're playing against someone they want something from?

You're watching someone under pressure for four hours.

Bill Gates played golf with Warren Buffett before they became close friends. Buffett has said the game gave them a shared language. Eisenhower played 800 rounds as president. Not because he had nothing better to do, but because the relationships built on a golf course are qualitatively different to the ones built anywhere else.

There's also the access question.

Golf is one of the few activities where a junior person can legitimately spend four hours with a senior one, with no power dynamic awkwardness. The course levels things in a way a conference room never does.

For aspiring leaders, the message is simple: if you're not playing, you're sitting out of conversations that are happening without you. The deals aren't done on the 18th green, the movies have that wrong. But the trust that makes deals possible? A lot of that gets built between the first tee and the clubhouse.

Golf is expensive, takes time, and has a steep learning curve. Nobody said the best tools were easy.