The appointment in 2015 of Martin Slumbers as secretary of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews as well as chief executive of the R&A was unusual enough to be described by some as being out of left field. What would these same people think of the appointment last week of Mark Darbon as Slumbers’ successor after a search that had begun in January? Very few saw that coming. Darbon’s name did resound throughout a sport in England, but it was rugby, not golf.
“Mr Darbon will succeed Martin Slumbers as Secretary of the 270-year-old Club which has a global membership of more than 2,400 and become Chief Executive of the governing body and organisation which runs the Open and AIG Women’s Open and invests in developing golf around the world in November,” read the formal announcement from St Andrews last Monday.
Slumbers will hand over to Darbon after overseeing next week’s Open Championship, the AIG Women’s Open at St Andrews on August 22-25 and the Curtis Cup at Sunningdale on August 30-September 1. He and Darbon will work briefly in harness, as Slumbers did with Peter Dawson, his predecessor, before Slumbers leaves his large commodious, wood-panelled office, with its telescope on the balcony, overlooking the first tee and the 18th green at St Andrews for the last time.
Dawson and Michael Bonallack, who preceded him, were both members of the R&A before assuming office. Slumbers was not, and Darbon is not. Darbon is, though, a good golfer with a handicap of 3.1 at Northamptonshire County Golf Club at Church Brampton, a village about 75 miles northwest of London, and at the rather better known Saunton Golf Club in Devon, a club often mentioned as a possible site for future Opens were its road and rail links better and more accommodation nearby.
A pattern is emerging here and that is that as the R&A copes with the demands of modern commerce, so its chief executive must have exceptional business experience. Youthfulness is an advantage. Dawson, who had been managing director of a small manufacturing company with 150 employees by age 24, ended up running the Europe, Africa and Middle East operations of an American company that manufactures crane and earthmoving equipment. He was 51 when he joined the R&A. At the time of his appointment, Slumbers, then 55, had spent almost his entire working life in senior international positions for Salomon Brothers and then Deutsche Bank before joining the R&A.
Darbon, 45, fits this pattern easily. He held high-level involvement in the organising of the 2012 Olympic Games in London and was an adviser to the International Olympic Committee from 2013 to 2018. By then he had been an executive with Tough Mudder Inc. in New York, planning, promoting and staging mass-participation events in America, both north and south, Europe and Australasia; chief executive of Madison Sports Group to launch a series of professional cycling events across Europe; had a brief spell as a management consultant; and worked for Diageo, the large drinks company, in China.
“Given Mark’s calibre and his capability as a leader, it was inevitable that one day he would be approached to take on a leading role within one of the most reputable sporting organisations in the world.”
John White
Guy Escolme was marketing director, China, for Diageo in 2006 when he first met Darbon, then in his mid-20s. “I knew I had encountered someone who was going places,” Escolme told GGP last week. “If you’re the biggest drinks company in the world, and you’ve got a lot of brands and some of those brands are world-leading brands, you need to pick and choose. There was something about Mark that was highly objective, not subjective, not opinionated and very disarming in the way he made his decisions. Unlike 90 percent of the people in that role – especially someone as junior as he was then – he seemed to be able to make decisions in a way that would make people coalesce around those decisions. That fascinated me. I was middle management; he was junior management, but I was around a lot of very senior people, and he stood there presenting stuff. I could see his ability to create consensus from positions of division or polarisation. It is a very interesting gift.
“He has a breadth of knowledge,” Escolme said. “He is very worldly. When I first met him, I thought he was about the most unsporting person you could ever meet, and then I found out he was good at hockey playing for his county or for England or whatever. He doesn’t look like a rugby player, and, honestly, he doesn’t look like a golfer. He has gravitas, charisma and authority that comes not from his physical presence and not from his personality. It’s not, Look at me; I’ve got all the answers. He is not the person who wanted to say, I’m the person who pulled off this coup of carrying the team from A to Z. He will talk about people around him but never himself. It’s disarming; that’s what it is. He is incredibly humble and very deferential, which is odd for a leader. I have never heard a negative word come out of Mark’s mouth.”
Most recently, Darbon has been chief executive officer of the Northampton Saints, one of the highest-level professional rugby teams in Britain, for seven years, leading the franchise to a club-record turnover of almost £22 million (about $28 million) at a time when Wasps, Worcester and London Irish, three other professional rugby clubs in England, folded.
“Given Mark’s calibre and his capability as a leader, it was inevitable that one day he would be approached to take on a leading role within one of the most reputable sporting organisations in the world,” said John White, Northampton Saints’ chairman. “So, this move, while disappointing for the club, is not surprising, and we have planned for this moment. I have enjoyed every minute working with him. He deserves this opportunity, and I have no doubt that he will have a huge impact at the R&A and bring that organisation the same success as he has here …”
Contacted on behalf of Global Golf Post by a mutual friend, Darbon declined to be interviewed. “I think it’s a pass for now…,” he texted the friend. “I don’t start formally until the back end of the year, so best to wait for now. Happy to potentially do something at a later date.”
John Hopkins