"He has a gift that is absolutely awesome, of seeing business
opportunities others would miss and acting on them decisively, to
say the least," Gardiner says. "And that's not something he learned
in business school. It's instinctive. He's a born
entrepreneur."
THAT DE SAVARY'S entrepreneurial skills are not the product of an
MBA program is undeniable. Born and raised on a farm in western
England, he never went to college. Actually, he admits with a
rather raffish grin, he didn't quite complete his secondary school
education: "I went to boarding school and left on my 17th birthday
because the headmaster asked me to leave. I'd been found in the
bedroom of his nanny."
However, de Savary adds, "I wouldn't have gone to university even
had I graduated. I didn't like anything about school except the
sports. I was a swimmer, a runner, and a boxer. I rode horses. And
from the age of nine I was a sailor." The latter is the only sport
he pursued seriously in adulthood, making it all the way to the
1983
America's Cup race, where he came in a close second. But de
Savary's early enthusiasm for
athletics is still evident, in both
the sporting orientation of his resorts - where activities aside
from championship-level
golf range from all manner of watersports
to falconry to beach gallops on
Texas quarter horses - and in his
still youthfully vigorous personal charisma.
"He has the power to just light up a room," enthuses Richard
Hallam, de Savary's development and operations director and a
longtime employee.
Upon leaving school in 1961, de Savary immediately started working
at a mind-boggling array of jobs. "And I've been working ever
since. I was a gardener, and I'd babysit for people's kids in the
evenings. I sold secondhand Mercedes cars and encyclopedias. I did
some short-order cooking and cleaned rooms in hotels. I was a house
painter for a while, and when I came back to England, I ran a small
furniture factory and became what's called a joiner, so I'm a
reasonable carpenter."