Mike Aldrich may not spend much time in a boardroom, but the work he does helps a lot of business deals get done.

As a player development manager for PGA of America, he connects PGA-certified golf professionals with novices, including executives who want to learn how to play the sport to bolster their career.

“We at the PGA honestly believe that golf is an important business tool,” says Aldrich, a PGA golf professional himself for 20 years. “When it’s not in your toolkit, you’re at a disadvantage.”

Though contracts typically aren’t signed out on the course, Aldrich credits golf for giving business associates more face time.

“It’s very hard to get more than 60 minutes with someone in a business meeting,” he says. “Well, golf is four hours, then possibly there’s a cocktail afterward. So in effect you end up with a five-hour meeting. The connections you can make with the other person are powerful.”

During nearly four years in the role, Aldrich has helped widen the golf world for women, young people, and other underrepresented groups. These new players include 344 female associates at KPMG offices across the country, who have taken the PGA’s five-week Get Golf Ready program; it covers basic skills and the sport’s particular rules of etiquette.

For example, along with lessons in how to properly hold a club, students learn the importance of making a tee time … how it’s more akin to catching a flight (which will leave without you) than keeping a dinner reservation. At program’s end, teacher and students play a few holes on a real golf course.

“We’re creating a ‘navigable golfer,’” Aldrich says. “That is a person who can make their way through a round of golf without endangering themselves or anybody else.”