 
|
|||||||||
              
|
Four locals make Golf Digest's list of top CEO golfers
Wednesday, February 16, 2000 By Len Boselovic, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Competition in business has never been tougher. Just ask the victims of inexorable fate on Golf Digest's list of the 200 best CEO golfers. The magazine's current issue cites PPG Industries Chairman Raymond LeBoeuf as Pittsburgh's best CEO golfer, with a USGA handicap index of 6.4. LeBoeuf, a member at Fox Chapel, Laurel Valley and Rolling Rock country clubs, ranks 13th on the list.
A 6.4 handicap would have been good enough for 5th place in 1998, the only other year the magazine compiled the list. There were 12 single-digit handicappers on the 1998 list of 110 chief executive officers, compared with 37 on this year's list.
With scores going lower and Wall Street going higher, has Golf Digest discovered a correlation between the quality of corporate golf and the quality of corporate earnings? Or is it evidence of an accounting scandal at America's tonier golf clubs?
Maybe companies are doing better because CEOs are spending more time on the golf course and less at the office, jokes Robert Dammon, a 9-handicapper and finance professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Graduate School of Industrial Administration.
The reasoning is appealing. But former caddy and Allegheny Technologies President and CEO Thomas A. Corcoran tees up a more plausible explanation.
"The equipment's getting better, and the technique of teaching is getting better," says Corcoran, whose 12 handicap puts him in a six-way tie for 63rd.
Corcoran shares the title of second-best Pittsburgh CEO golfer with USX Chairman Thomas J. Usher, who's also a 12. However, the magazine's list doesn't include PNC Bank Chairman Thomas O'Brien, who finished 5th in 1998 with a 7.1 handicap. A Golf Digest spokeswoman said the magazine called O'Brien to confirm a handicap they obtained from other sources, but O'Brien didn't return the calls.
Maybe they should have tried reaching him in the men's grill.
The only other local CEO finishing in the Top 200 was Mellon Bank Chairman Martin McGuinn. The Fox Chapel and Laurel Valley member finished 84th with a 13.1 handicap. Two years ago, former Mellon Chairman Frank Cahouet finished tied for 92nd with a 22 handicap.
Evidently, women have just as many problems with the grass ceiling as they do with the glass one. Golf Digest's all-male roster is once again topped by Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy with a 3.3 handicap. In 1998, McNealy's 3.2 handicap beat out General Electric Chairman Jack Welch's 3.8. These days, Welch is missing more fairways and greens. He carries a 7.1 handicap and is tied for 16th.
J.C. Penney CEO James F. Oesterreicher's 22.4 handicap was the worst among the Top 200.
The magazine listed 30 CEOs who didn't make the cut, including Dominion Resources Chairman -- and former Consolidated Natural Gas Chairman -- George A. Davidson Jr.
Don't feel bad for Davidson. He'll have plenty of time to lower his 30.4 handicap when he retires from the Richmond, Va., utility Aug. 1. His successor, former Dominion Chairman Thomas A. Capps, tied for 148th on the list with an 18.0 handicap.
|
||||||||
