For most executives who play golf, a 3-handicap would be enough to impress business associates. But not for Scott G. McNealy, the hypercompetitive chief executive of Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW
) Reason? "Well, that isn't my peer group," he jokes. Indeed, with a 3.3 handicap index, McNealy was often thrust into foursomes that would cause your average exec golfer to quake--including pairings in pro-ams with Ernie Els, Hal Sutton, and Tiger Woods. In those circles, McNealy was as much as 70 yards behind his illustrious playing partners off the tee and a good five to 10 strokes behind them after each round.
So three years ago, McNealy enlisted the aid of leading swing coaches such as Jim Gerber to shave his handicap down even lower. Meeting with the executive for a couple of sessions each quarter, Gerber gradually smoothed out McNealy's herky-jerk swing ("It was like a slap shot in hockey: hard, fast--and hard.") to help him pick up another 15 to 20 yards off the tee.
The coach spent most of his precious time on McNealy's biggest problem, his short game. "He didn't have the shots he needed from 40 yards in," says Gerber. With Gerber's help, McNealy cured the excessive knee bend on his chips and developed a smoother putting stroke. McNealy pared his index to a mere 0.3--earning him a spot among the 10 most improved CEO golfers over the past two years (table).
McNealy's inclusion is all the more remarkable given that he was already in low single digits. For the most part, the most improved CEO list assembled by Golf Digest and BusinessWeek is populated by high handicappers who shaved as many as a half-dozen strokes off their games. Top honors go to Vance D. Coffman, chief executive of defense giant Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT
), who lopped off more than six strokes, going from an 18 to an 11.7 index since 2000.
Coffman just edged out Thomas E. Capps, the head of Dominion Resources Inc. (D
), a Richmond (Va.)-based utility, who dropped from an 18 to a 12. "You can tell he's been spending more time practicing than in the past," says Jon Hineline, head pro at the Foundry Golf Club in Powhatan, Va. "He's here every Saturday now with two or three friends."
Not surprisingly in light of the public flogging the nation's chief executives have taken recently, few on the list were willing to talk publicly about their golf games. Also not surprisingly, 40% of the CEO golfers surveyed saw their average scores rise over the two years--although some executives dismiss the increase to seasonal fluctuations. "My game has actually been the same for a couple of years," insists Robert D. Walter, head of Columbus (Ohio)-based Cardinal Health (CAH
). Despite the measured rise in his index from 3.6 to 4.8, Walter says he's now playing back at 3. Others joke that their rising handicaps don't reflect changes in their game so much as the declining deference towards CEOs. "There are no more gimmes or mulligans for CEOs these days," says Joel W. Johnson, chief executive of Hormel Foods Corp. (HRL
), whose index ticked up from 5.3 to 6.5.
Truth is, many executives are simply finding it harder to break away from the office. Among them: Richard B. Priory, chief executive of beleaguered Duke Energy Corp. (DUK
), whose four-stroke rise from 6.3 to 10.3 was the largest of any CEO measured. "This has been a tough year. My clubs are sitting in a corner, waiting for a rebound," he sighs. (Priory has other competition for his time: twin granddaughters born earlier this year. "I've traded birdies for babies in 2002," he says.)
Interestingly, you can't draw correlations between a chief executive's golf game and his company's stock price. We found that the stock prices of the 10 companies whose CEOs were at the top of the "most improved" rankings averaged a respectable 10.8% gain over the past two years, thanks in part to the heady 123.6% surge in the shares of Lockheed Martin. That compares with the average 3.7% gain for the stocks of the 10 companies whose CEOs saw their golf games decline the most. Overall, the stocks of both groups outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, which fell 39% over the past two years.
Investment experts don't seem to hold it against a chief executive if he's spending time on his game. "Heck, Scott [McNealy] is so compulsive he's probably working on his swing after midnight in his yard with the porch light on," says Henry J. Herrmann, chief investment officer at Waddell & Reed Inc., whose funds hold 1.25 million shares of Sun. And that may be the common thread: Any CEO with the fire to wring a few strokes out of his game is likely bringing the same competitive fire to the job.
By Dean Foust
With Jim Kerstetter and Julie Forster
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Copyright 2002, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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