Bidness Golf: using golf to improve one's bottom line remains an American tradition, even if the tax man has taken some fun out of the game.

• Author: Dodson, Jim
• Position: Jasper Technologies, Inc

My old buddy Jasper makes lots of dough playing golf. He doesn't make it playing professionally or even wagering on friendly weekend matches. He makes it playing what he affectionately calls "bidness golf" around the Triad and Triangle. Using the game to enhance one's stature with important clients and customers is as ancient as the game itself.

I won't tell you Jasper's real name, because he would be embarrassed to the tip of his fashionable FootJoys if I singled him out as a guy who claims to be a purist when it comes to keeping the traditions of the game, yet he clearly sees golf as a key asset to his bottom line.

Back in the early 1990s, when everything from Florida time shares to Trump Steaks was up for sale and red hot, I wrote about the phenomenon of company golf, a concept born around American country clubs in the 1960s and refined over the decades that followed. Though still considered heresy in much of the game's Scottish homeland, the idea of using social connections made through golf to feather one's business interests became as commonplace in America as designer golf courses ringed by upscale housing.

One business expert told me that a third of the golf played in the 1990s had a direct business purpose. "Probably half the deals made in America," he insisted at the time, "are made on the golf course these days." Books described the natural connection between golf and the art of corporate dealmaking.

Best of all, back then, you could merrily write off almost everything--green fees, travel expenses, drinks at the 19th Hole, even your swanky hotel room--and get clean away thumbing your nose at the Internal Revenue Service.

Amid the salad days of corporate largesse, Jasper often passed out illegal Cuban cigars on the first tee to his best golf companions. He managed to write off at least two new custom-made sets of Callaway golf clubs, not to mention every blessed golf ball, during three consecutive presidential terms.

Oh, how times have changed. First came the 1RS, which around the turn of the century began denying golf-related company expenses, regarding such deductions to be about as legit as a Russian dating service. A double blow came with the recession of 2007-09, which devastated the hospitality industry and sent the nation's overbuilt golf industry into the tank. A frightening percentage of high-priced daily fee courses and resorts--and even many mainline private clubs--became insolvent, prompting forced sales and closings.

...