Talking about golf never fails to put people at ease. Even the bad shots.
So when asked about it, businessman Robert John Sobrepeña beamed. He settled on his leather, argyle chair and remembered fondly how he would play golf with the late former president Fidel V. Ramos back in the ‘90s.
During those rounds, Sobrepeña said they would talk about a lot of things including building a mass transport project. An idea that may have given birth to what is now the MRT-3.
There is truth to it, after all: The tired, old saying that more business deals are done on the golf course than in the board room.
“That’s a big one. Golf and the president of the country had to do with a big infrastructure in the country,” Sobrepena told Tribune Golf in an exclusive interview. “Oh, but there are many more.”
It was a free-wheeling talk with the top-notch developer — whose vast work includes the MRT-3 itself and several golf courses like the famed Manila Southwoods — inside his office in Pasig.
But it mostly delved on the game very close to his heart.
“There a lot of deals that are discussed during a golf game, but normally the way it happens is you start talking about the business side before golf, during, and then after golf is more on trying to finalize a lot of these deals. So yeah, there’s a lot of business deals,” he said.
Of course, he happens to be good at both golf and business.
And his theorem makes sense as well because most of the time the people who makes the biggest decisions that affect the biggest portion of society are those who can afford to play golf.
But for Sobrepeña — whose handicap went to an all-time high of eight before the years brought it to 12 — golf allows people to have better perspective.
“When you play golf, you’re under a lot of better situations, you are more relaxed, you may drink together. You definitely will eat together. Play together and somehow discussing business is a little bit easier. Or a lot easier,” he said.
Golf’s languid nature, played in the outdoors, generally makes for a more stable mental and emotional state.
That’s why seeing golfers’ outbursts on the Internet is too odd it automatically becomes viral. People want to see how walking on manicured grass, under the blue skies, could make someone blow their top.
“They say a guy’s golf style, his golf game, reflects his personality. You always learn something about people from playing golf with them,” Sobrepeña said.
He plays at least twice a week. It could be in Southwoods, Forest Hills or in John Hay depending on his schedule.
“In golf, you make time to play. Because I manage many golf facilities, when I play golf there’s a meeting before or after the game,” he said. “(I play) with all my golf people. So, it’s work and play. When I play, I can see what’s happening and my maintenance (people) would always hear from me after the game.”
It has yet to make Sobrepeña lose his temper. Because his courses are always in top shape. But that’s topic for different story altogether.
(Watch out for the second part on Thursday on Golf Plus)
