Teaching finance is often challenging, requiring innovative strategies to engage students and teachers. One interesting approach is to use golf as a metaphor to teach financial principles, taking advantage of its complexity and the cognitive and motor skills it develops, as well as its ability to establish informal corporate networks.

Wesley Mendes-da-Silva, a researcher at Fundação Getulio Vargas’ Sao Paulo School of Business Administration (FGV EAESP), conducted a pioneering experiment integrating principles about golf and financial decisions in a 60-hour program spread over five days at a country club.

The program featured talks by golf professionals, designers and a military officer, and was attended by 30 students. During the course, the fundamentals of golf and finance were presented, alternating between practical sessions on the golf course and theoretical lessons on financial decisions in startups and credit risk management.

The students also took part in a team golf tournament, illustrating the connections between this sport and the financial environment. The program took place thanks to FGV EAESP’s interaction with the market and in particular Banco ABC, which understood the merits of the idea. The bank supported the course, providing two executives, an event organization team and most of the funding.

The experiment revealed that the golf experience improved student engagement, promoted reflection on behavior in corporate contexts and provided valuable tools for teaching financial principles and high-level management. In addition, the participants demonstrated a greater commitment to core golfing values, such as ethics and planning, which proved to be connected to the financial environment, helping them diagnose and address common psychological errors in financial behavior.

The research also highlighted the feasibility of integrating sustainable finance themes into “Golf Finance” programs, addressing topics such as ESG, compliance and corporate governance. This intersection between golf and corporate decision making offers a wide range of analogies for financial decision making at personal and corporate levels, positioning golf as a key tool for collaborative programs and professional networking. An article documenting the experiment contains open data available to anyone interested, free of charge. 

To read the full study, click here.