JERUSALEM — In the middle of a lush, 250-acre setting, a group of usually office-bound accountants from Brightman Almagor-Deloitte & Touche are standing in a circle taking instructions from Penny Chalfon.
“Stand with your legs apart, knees slightly bent, with your tush sticking out,” says Chalfon, from under her big khaki hat. “Like a gorilla.” The jeans-clad men and women, who are partners and senior employees of the firm’s Haifa branch, do as she says.
“Now, swing your arms to the right and then to the left,” continues Chalfon, who is standing in the center of the circle. Again, the accountants — who are used to giving the orders — follow suit.
This is not a typical workday. Instead, CEO Igal Brightman’s employees have been plucked from their office cubicles and sent to frolic in the sunny outdoors. With ducks ambling past them on the green, they are taking pointers from Chalfon, who is teaching them to play golf.
Like other accountants, lawyers and high-tech workers in the country, these Brightman Almagor employees are following the leads of their counterparts in Australia, North America, Europe and Japan, and are learning the rules of one of the most popular games in the world.
In the business arena especially, more and more Israelis are learning that golf is a vital element of the moneymaking game.
“Golf is a way of communicating with people globally,” says Brightman, who himself took up the sport a couple of months ago. “You have English, and you have golf. It is a new way of communicating.”
The Caesarea club’s head golf pro, Andy Santos, who moved here from the United States five years ago, agrees. “If you don’t understand golf, you’re going to be left out of the conversation,” he says.
More than just a common language, golf is the new basis for deal-making.
In February, the Caesarea Golf Club initiated a new series of workshops aimed at the business community. In North America and Europe, such courses have been widely available for about a decade.
Understanding that golf, when played right, can be a legitimate sales tool and that the golf course is the new conference room for trade, the Caesarea club launched its program for Israelis who work with companies overseas.
“They go to the U.S. and are asked to play golf,” says Leah Schneider, head of public relations at the club. “But they get there and feel like tembelim (dummies).”
Avi Cohen, one of the club’s pros, says, “Every business in the world starts with golf. It’s a pity if your business partner plays and you don’t. They say you can make a better deal on the course than in a room over a cup of coffee.”
When lining up his putt, Shmuel Zysman isn’t just looking to hit a hole-in-one — he’s also hoping to score another kind of victory. “Our deals today are made on the golf course,” says the 43-year-old partner at the Zysman, Aharoni and Gayer law firm in Tel Aviv. “It’s not that you write the contract on the course, but it’s a good place to make the deal.”
One of the first companies to send its employees to the golf seminars was Comverse. The high-tech firm has already trained more than 100 employees at the Caesarea club. “When an employee goes to a foreign country, he has an ‘in,'” says Santos, who grew up in the Bay Area and is a member of the Professional Golfers Association in the United States.
With the golf course replacing the martini lunch in business deals, mastering the art of the golf deal is of the utmost importance for major international companies. It is commonplace for these companies to send their executives to business golf lessons, enabling executives to learn to sell themselves on the fairway.
Firms here are taking note. Since the workshop’s inception in Caesarea exactly one year ago, more than a dozen local firms have sent employees to learn how to swing a club. In addition to Brightman Almagor and Comverse, Netvision, Partner, Texas Instruments, Intel, Bar Technologies-Convert Systems Inc. and Aplettix have all taken part.
For Ilan Birnfeld, head of the Israeli high-tech division at Brightman Almagor, golf is an important tool. “Every conference I go to, there’s a choice between going fishing or playing golf,” says Birnfeld, who before taking part in the Caesarea workshop had never teed off.
Doron Steinberg, director general of Bar Technologies-Convert Systems, took 45 of his staff from around the country to the Caesarea Golf Club workshop.
“Twice a year we organize a Fun Day for the company and this time I chose to do something different,” he says. “It’s a good sport to build friendships, and it is a chance for everyone to get together and enjoy themselves.” Steinberg didn’t have business deals in mind when he brought his employees to the course. “Deals could happen here, but it’s not the reason we went. We went for fun,” he says.
Watching his Brightman Almagor employees take part in the workshop, their CEO is obviously pleased with his decision to bring his partners to Caesarea. As well as introducing them to golf for business purposes, Brightman says this day of fun helps build their relationships with one another. “I brought them here to see the green and be together and relax together.”
That accountants, high-tech personnel and lawyers are targeted by the Caesarea Golf Club plays into the understanding that golf is a game for the rich. But Santos, the club’s top pro, says this is a misconception.
The game is “thought of as a rich man’s game because it takes time, and time is money,” says Santos. “It’s actually cheap.” Membership at the Caesarea club starts at around $1,650 for one day a week of play for one year.
Santos, 33, grew up in the Bay Area near a golf course and has been playing since he was 9 years old.
So, why is golf not as popular in Israel as it is abroad?
“Because in the U.S. there are so many facilities. There are 17,000 golf courses in the States. Communities evolve around the golf course there,” says Santos.
Here, the Caesarea fairway is the country’s only full, 18-hole course. There is also a nine-hole course in Ga’ash.
In Israel, golf is still experimental, says Santos. “It is a full-day operation. For people who live in Tel Aviv, it’s an hour’s drive each way plus four hours on the course. I’m not sure I would play if I lived in Tel Aviv. The whole issue is shlepping out here.”
Yet Caesarea Golf Club has some 500 members.
Whereas the average age of members used to be 70, they are now closer to 40 years old.
Zysman says it shouldn’t be long before the game takes off here, especially since Israel is so advanced in the business world.
“People can’t believe that Israel, a country of business and high-tech, has only 1-1/2 golf courses,” says Zysman, who travels every six weeks to Canada or the United States to meet with clients and colleagues.
“In Silicon Valley there are at least 10 courses near the hotel I stay in,” says Zysman.
One of the obvious reasons the country has just one full course is land space. But Santos sees a way of solving that problem. “Golf is a great opportunity for kibbutzim to make serious revenue,” he says.