The Wall Street Journal - 20.03.2020

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Friday, March 20, 2020 |M11

IN THE TRENCHES| AMY GAMERMAN

NICOLE CASTRALE

LPGA winner, now a sales

executive, Toscana Country Club,

Indian Wells, Calif.

I won the Ladies Professional Golf As-

sociation’s Ginn Tribute Hosted by An-

nika in 2007, then played on two U.S.

Solheim Cup teams in 2007 and 2009.

We won both, and I made the final

putt that clinched the U.S. win in 2007.

I had quite a few injuries, including one

that ended in back surgery in 2015. I

haven’t played golf in five years. It has

been a real struggle. I miss it.

In 2016, I started thinking about

getting my real-estate license. Toscana

was always home for me when I

wasn’t on the road. I had met quite a

few of the guys on the sales team,

and the sales VP offered me a job in

November 2016. As a professional ath-

lete, I’ve been in sales—selling myself

and the LPGA.

Once, a client was looking at a lot

280 yards up on the left side of the

10th hole. He asked, “Don’t you think

our lot is in golf-ball range off the tee?

Aren’t some golfers going to try to cut

the corner over the left bunker?”

I said, “Actually, no, this hole is not a

sharp enough dogleg left for them to

be rewarded for cutting the corner.

Plus, the tee box on this hole is aiming

you out toward the right side of the

fairway, so I don’t think the lot is

nearly in play as you think it is.”

—Edited from interviews

What is it like to go from the

world of professional sports to

selling real estate?

Ex-Athletes

Try Sales Game

Q

CHUCK CARY
Former Major League
Baseball player, now vice
president of sales and
marketing
Kohanaiki, a private
club community,
Hawaii’s Big Island

Iwasborntobe6’4”and
left-handed, and to throw a
baseball 100 miles an hour. That’s
good equipment. It’s hard to screw that
up, although for years I tried. I had three
brothers and we were all a year apart,
so we always had a team.
I spent six years playing for the De-
troit Tigers, then the Atlanta Braves for
two years, then as a free agent I played
with the New York Yankees for three
years. I played for the Tokyo Giants and
came back for the Chicago White Sox for
one more year before I retired in 1993.
My wife and I were always interested
in real estate—buying and selling houses.
I had enough money to be a little dan-
gerous, but I knew eventually I had to go
back to work. We were living in Destin,
Fla. My wife says, “Why don’t you get
your real-estate license?” So I did. I got
my first job selling at the Sandestin Golf
and Beach Resort.
You do get recognized. When I was
showing high-end real estate in Florida,
clients would say, “We want Chuck Cary
to be our sales executive.” At least half of
those people were always trying to show
me how much money they had. They
were thinking I was worth $100 million
because I played Major League Baseball
for a while. They’d look at a $2 million
home and say, “That’s no problem.” And
I’m thinking, “I can’t afford that!”
We’ve got about nine sales agents on
our team. When I build a sales team, I

look at it like a pitching team. It

really does equate to a base-

ball mentality. You want to

see if you can get 12-game

winners, 15-game winners.

You get some young guys

and bring them up so

someday they’ll be a 15-

game winner or a 20-game

winner. I try to drag the same

guys with me wherever I go.

They’re like high-price free agents.

My role now is, hey, we’ve got parcels

of land all over our club. We’ve got these

beautiful $15 million homes on a bluff

overlooking the ocean and people actu-

ally buy them. It’s so gratifying.

And nobody boos you here.

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SCOTT HALLERAN/ALLSPORT/GETTY IMAGES (CARY); ROB CARR/ASSOCIATED PRESS (CASTRALE); MARK MATCHO (ILLUSTRATIONS, 2)

MANSION

NY/NE