Three days, 23 blokes, it’s wellness with whisky

Sunday, 16 November 2025

ESSAY: We call it the Boys’ Golf Weekend (BGW), but it lasts three days, and it’s not really about golf - or boys.

Three decades in, most players are on life's back nine, carrying the physical, mental, and marital baggage its carousel keeps tossing our way.

The BGW started in 2006 as Seven Go Golfing in the Wairarapa, with the oldest player in their mid 40s.

Then, it WAS about golf, three 18-hole games in two days, late night revelry, and resultant morning mist.

It grew and grew, like the score of an errant hacker, gradually moving to three days and earlier bedtimes.

Next weekend the 40th BGW will feature 23 men (boys, codgers), with the first player’s son joining. We would have had 25, but Frozen Shoulder and Knackered Finger had to pull out.

But that still leaves Heart Attack, Cardiac Arrest, Divorce (x4), Head Surgery, Wife’s Cancer, Vertigo, Redundancy (several), Stomach Cancer, Dodgy Shoulder, and a few Mental Mayhems.

One of us can now see the ball only on the tee or green (it's medical, he’s in the younger half of the field). We guide him to his ball for the next shot, then the next.

And yet, it’s a joyous three days.

We still chase pars, more sedately, or in carts. In the evening we clutch a craft beer, savour steak, avoid warm salad, gaze out over the soothing Wairarapa hills, and close out with a whisky tasting.

It’s an oft-silent men’s support group. We might talk over life, we might not, and rarely on the course.

My wife will ask me on return something along the lines of: “How’s Eugene handling his divorce?”

“We didn’t talk about that.”

“Three days, and you didn’t mention it?”

“It’s a golf weekend,” I will say. As if that explains everything.

In groups, men circle the issue for a few laps, survey the landscape, avoid the emotional, yet somehow that’s enough to be of help.

More than once a BGW player has thanked us for being his bridge over troubled waters, when it’s hard to recall him getting a single word of advice or any display of overt emotion.

Women dive into the story head first, delve into the stress, ponder the emotional impact with audible caring and a glass of wine.

Of course those are generalisations, but also in general it seems we are each adept at dealing with our own audiences.

Australian mental health advocate and author of Man Unplugged John Broadbent sums it up succinctly.

“Men need men … whether we know it or not,” he says.

“We deal with things differently to women, who are more prone to talk outwardly, bounce off each other and can move through myriad emotions in a heartbeat, much to the dismay of men who tend to process inwardly, and linearly, more slowly and in silence.”

When it comes to a weekend away men need to set boundaries, and not just ones that signal your ball has left the course.

“It's important to 'set the day', to frame what the day is about (golf?) and what are to be the rules of engagement,” he says.

“Sometimes, this happens organically when one man, brave enough to speak about what's weighing him down, opens up and shares.

“For that to happen, he either has to feel safe, or has so much of himself (usually through deep 'inner work') that he can keep himself safe while being openly and unashamedly vulnerable.”

Men such as those are a gift to a group as they seed the level of depth the group can go, in an act of profound and visible leadership.

“It will inevitably also generate discomfort in those men not familiar with such conversations, and there will be a range of 'I'm OK with this' to 'GMTF out of here!' Either way, the fact that such depth happens at all will have an impact.”

Other rules he suggests: no interrupting, no shaming or sledging or inappropriate banter - confidentiality is a big one. The safer the 'container' the deeper men will go.

“So, there is no right or wrong here. Only an opportunity for those who show up, to show up more.”

In 2012, when Stomach Cancer showed up at Carterton Golf Club with a beanie over a bald chemotherapy head, he was bemused to see the tour founder in a mullet wig.

And then he gazed around the car park to see, wig, wig, wig, another wig, wig, wig. No words were needed. In that moment six months of misery were addressed and sorted.

Nor are words needed when you’re walking down a fairway with a mate who is in tears over the failure of his marriage.

Or to the one gasping after the tee box climb proves too much for his ailing heart.

On Saturday evening we feast, give out prizes and jackets that mark a player reaching 10 tours, newcomers recite a limerick that pertains to their tour nickname.

We laugh, we sing - well, it's more than laughing and less than actual singing.

It is something magical, a grass roots creation that grew like Jack’s Beanstalk.

“Look what you’ve created,” Tee Rex said while hosting one such night, in doing so opening our eyes to the revelry, and our minds to the emotional impact.

Men friends are crucial, says Victoria University Psychology professor Marc Wilson, who adds there is a lot of talk about a crisis among men.

Suicide was a leading cause of death among men in many nations, and rates of suicide are consistently higher among men than women.

The middle-aged tend to report more loneliness than those of any other age. Younger, and older, women tend to report greater loneliness than men.

“Men have fewer close friendships overall, compared to women. In fact, research suggests that there has been a significant decline in men's friendship networks,” Wilson says.

In America, the percentage of men who could name at least six close friends had fallen from 55% in 1990 to 27%.

Only 3% of American men in 1990 said they had no close friends, now it’s 15%.

“I've seen this referred to as a `friendship recession’,” he says.

Men tended to particularly rely on their romantic partners as sources of support, and social calendar managers, which has led to the view that partnered men lose the ability to make friends as their friendship equipment atrophies, he says.

Due to long-held and ingrained masculinity norms, many men feel they have to be self-reliant and be seen to be self-reliant.

“Expressing your vulnerabilities makes you an unmanly man, so men may not seek out support, and they may not deal with their emotions adaptively,” Wilson says.

“By this I mean that we often avoid our emotional experience by doing things that aren't good for us, and don't solve the underlying problem. We drink, for example.”

Connor, one of his Master’s students, has found alcohol isn't just a way for men to avoid their emotions.

“It can also allow a space for people to express them in ways that don't invalidate their man card - when you've had a few you can talk about stuff because you've had a few.”

His bottom line is friendships are important, and not 'just' friendships; any connection with another person.

Research says the more social capital we have, the healthier we are and the longer we live. Belonging to a club or a workplace or a support group is good for our health.

It has also found people with more well-developed social networks are less likely to catch a cold, people who've had a heart attack are less likely to have a second if they belong to more 'groups'.

So yes, we call it the Boys’ Golf Weekend — but really, it’s a master class in male maintenance, wellness with whisky.

What do you think? Email sundayletters@stuff.co.nz. Please include your full name and address.