18 holes of tips and trivia to get a hole-in-one with prospects and clients

Avid golfers and reluctant duffers alike spend hours each year on the golf course, entertaining prospects and clients. Are you making the most of all that time? Before your next round — whether for league or club play, relaxation, or charity event — plan how to network and communicate.

Here are 18 tips and tidbits — one for each hole — about golf and networking. Whether you’re a die hard player or just learning the difference between a wedge and an iron, try these with your next foursome.

Hole #1: Relax. You’ve already accomplished the most important task in networking — finding a low-key environment where people can be relaxed and open.

Hole #2: Resist the urge. Don’t pull out your card. Just get up there and play the ball, one shot at a time.

Hole #3: Take a swing at a joke, then the ball. If you’re more a “slicer” than a “Sam Snead,” break the ice by stepping up to the tee and saying: “They don’t call me Aerosol Man for nothing.” When they ask what you mean, tell them: “I spray the ball a lot.” While they groan, you hit.

Hole #4 (or the first water hole): Crack another one. Quietly let on that the last water hole you played resulted in a “Culligan.” They’ll probably ask if you meant to say “mulligan.” You say: “I said a Culligan. That’s a mulligan that ends up in the water!”

Hole #5: Start conversations. You’ve made your attempt at humor. Now enjoy yourself and start one-to-one conversations. Share some of your dreams.

Hole #6: Tell them what you’re working on. Ask them what they’re working on. Think about ideas, alliances, referrals, new opportunities. Anything can come out of a simple conversation, especially when you don’t push it.

Hole #7: Quit talking about the game you’re playing. If you must refer to your game, be concise. It’s tiresome to talk about your game, fairway after fairway. Worse: offering unsolicited advice to others.

Hole #8: Make contact, not contacts. While there are only three others in a foursome, don’t give in to the pressure that you have to get to know all of them.

Hole #9: Check if you are listening more than talking. Have your elevator pitch ready and use it. But remind yourself it’s more important to learn what others do.

For the next nine holes, you may try anecdotes and trivia such as:

Hole #10: Take a history lesson. The founding of the U.S. Golf Association in 1894 marked the formal organization of American golf. That centralized body wrote the rules, organized national championships and formed a system of handicapping.

Hole #11: Putter around. The USGA preserves Bob Jones’s legendary putter he used to capture 10 of his 13 national titles; Alan Shepard’s “Moon Club;” artifacts from the World Trade Center; and a driver carried up Mt. Everest.

Hole #12: Bow to Byron. Golf historians say professional Byron Nelson, who died at age 94 in 2006, invented the modern golf swing. He perfected it in the 1940s, and no one has ever come close to the 11 straight victories or 18 single-season titles Nelson won in 1945. In 30 events that season, he took home a huge 14.5 percent of total prize money.

Hole #13: Man of iron. Nelson was a model for a robot (dubbed “Iron Byron”), recently retired but used for years by the USGA. Iron Byron could repeat the same swing 10,000 times to test and compare balls and clubs. Iron Byron’s swing was so consistent that the USGA had to replace the center line of its test fairway every two years because of the damage caused by golf balls landing in the same spot 1,000 to 2,000 times per day.

Hole #14: Collecting, anyone? The Golf Collectors Society, Society of Hickory Golfers, British Golf Collectors Society and other groups dedicate themselves to the history of golf and golf memorabilia. Most valuable is anything related to old-time golf, especially items produced around or before 1900. (By the way, your clients’ golf memorabilia can and should be insured by a specific collectibles policy.)

Hole #15: Have a ball. The oldest golf balls, known as “feather balls” as they were stuffed with feathers until solid, were used through the 1850s.

Hole #16: Put down those clubs! Pick up a weapon! King James II banned golf as a sport in 1457. He feared golfing would interfere with developing archery skills, the main form of warfare during that time, according to Pamela Nelson, author of “Buying & Selling Antiques and Collectibles on eBay.” The Scottish Golf Society said its ancestors ignored the ban and kept hitting the links.

Hole #17: Golfer up! Athletes are known for their fondness for golf, from Babe Ruth all the way to Michael Jordan. Ruth (the home-run king until Henry Aaron broke his record in 1976), had a post-baseball rivalry with career batting-average leader Ty Cobb. Cobb won the “Ruth Cup,” a trophy for beating Ruth in the best of three matches. He put the trophy above his fireplace next to his Baseball Hall of Fame plaque.

Hole #18: Wood you play with this club? Today’s high-tech equipment can trace its roots and inspiration to the “Tommy Armour 693,” a driver made of persimmon wood and hardened with oil. The most popular collectible golf clubs have wooden shafts.