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“Ethics and morals, abilities and attitudes, and temperaments - that all comes out on the golf course. You can size someone up pretty quickly.”
(Click here to view a companion photo essay)
Jeff Bishop swings hard. Thwack! It’s his final drive of the day in the Biotech Golf Network’s annual team tournament at Maderas Golf Club, northeast of San Diego. Bishop’s ball flies straight down the fairway, coming to a stop two feet short of the green. It’s early November, and a smoky haze lingers in the sky from wildfires still burning in San Diego County.
Bishop is vice president at Biosite, the San Diego-based subsidiary of Inverness Medical Innovations. His teammates are John Hughes, an R&D director at Invitrogen in nearby Carlsbad, and Patrick Finn, lately of Invitrogen and now with a Boston-area life sciences company. Rounding out the foursome is Clark Renner, a local golf pro.
Known as Team Invitrogen, these guys are nonstop wisecrackers. But beneath the Rat Pack banter, the foursome is deadly serious about golf. Team Invitrogen has won the tournament two years running and Bishop’s drive has positioned it for a three-peat. “There’s first place, and there’s the first best loser, and I can tell you none of us want to be that,” Hughes says solemnly.
Finn’s up next. He’s 6-foot-4 and has a powerful swing. He takes off his cap and scratches his head as he casts a long look down the fairway. Renner wipes his iron clean while Hughes fidgets with a range finder. “I think I’ve got one good swing left in me,” Finn says. He isn’t kidding. The ball sails.
The Biotech Golf Network, or BGN, is a group of San Diego life sciences professionals and suppliers who get together once a month to play 18 holes and talk shop, pitch product, or schmooze a potential business partner, boss, client, or employee. The membership list is 300. Monthly outings bring out a few dozen players at courses ranging from budget to swanky. The annual tournament attracts 150. Skill levels vary. Some BGN members barely know the business end of a 9 iron, but many are serious players. Finn’s handicap is scratch. Renner played in the 2000 U.S. Open but was bested by a younger golfer named Tiger Woods.
As a biotech hub, San Diego ranks third behind the San Francisco Bay Area and Boston-Cambridge. As a slice of heaven for biotech golfers, “America’s finest city”—blessed with year-round sunshine and lush courses with beautiful natural backdrops—may be second to none.
Marquee names like Pfizer, The Scripps Research Institute, Burnham Institute for Medical Research, Johnson Therapeutic, and the Salk Institute are clustered around scenic Torrey Pines, one of Southern California’s premier courses and host of the 2008 U.S. Open. Even employees in the smaller science-biotech community of Mira Mesa-Sorrento Valley are close enough to Torrey Pines to get in nine holes in the morning and punch in on time.
