Cancer test drive at golf club led to treatments

A drive at Chestfield Golf Club in Kent for its members to get tested for prostate cancer led to five men receiving treatment.

The club’s men’s captain, David Wells, picked Prostate Cancer UK as his charity for the year, and in doing so encouraged members to get tested.

As a result, 40 members got tested and five of them discovered they needed treatment for the cancer.

“Overall, we understand that 40 members got themselves tested and out of that 40, at least five guys needed treatment for the cancer,” he said. “One guy who got tested on the back of it went into radiation treatment recently, while others are still getting tested. So just imagine what can be done if every golf club captain adopted a similar approach.

“My motivation for supporting Prostate Cancer UK started 12 years ago when one of my dearest friends retired. Within a few weeks, he decided to have a health check and unfortunately discovered he had the early signs of prostate cancer. More recently when I found that his life was sadly coming to an end, I was in the frame to become captain of the golf club and, as every club member knows, captains nominate a charity for fundraising during their year in the role. I was so impressed by my friend’s attitude when living with prostate cancer, that there was no other charity that I wanted to become involved with than Prostate Cancer UK. However, I wanted to look at it slightly differently from conventional charity efforts, because I’ve seen how a worthy cause doesn’t always relate to all the club members.

“Once in the captaincy role, I put an action plan together to ensure my message got across. If you came to the clubhouse, you couldn’t miss the Prostate Cancer UK signs and the reminders for men to get tested. In conjunction with club professional Warren Bennett, we put a sheet up on the main notice board urging male members to go and get a test… and then put their name up on the board when they’d been tested. I started it off by putting my name up, followed by Warren when we both got our negative test results back. Soon after our names went up, we started to see more and more people putting their names on the sheet to provide physical evidence of its impact within the club.”

Club member James Dengate also organised a 72-hole ‘Big Golf Race’ marathon with eight players taking part in a medal format.

The club organised food and drinks for them for the duration, as well as finding people willing to carry bags and ball spotters as they were playing a competition with it as well.

“My boss at work said he was so proud of my efforts in setting up this challenge, that it matched the money we’ve raised for the charity. So it turned out from being around £3,000 raised in The Big Golf Race by guys who had a great time doing so, to £6,500,” said Dengate.

In total, the club raised over £25,000.

This year, the leading men’s health charity is urging more golfers to take part in The Big Golf Race to help save dads, grandads, brothers, uncles and friends from a disease that affects one in eight men in the UK.

Golf clubs around the UK, like Chestfield, can raise money to help fund research to find better tests to save men’s lives by taking on the marathon, which consists of four rounds and 26 miles of walking in a day / half marathon, two rounds of golf in a day and 13 miles of walking / ultra marathon, which consists of 100 rounds in a day and a whopping 35 miles of walking.

Prostate Cancer UK ambassador and former Masters champion Danny Willett is also backing the epic challenge and hopes 2024 is another record-breaking year for The Big Golf Race.

He said: “The golf community’s response to The Big Golf Race has been incredible, so it’s no surprise that it’s now the biggest golf fundraising challenge in the UK. It just goes to show just how far golfers will go to raise money for an incredible cause and I’ll be doing all I can to help them this year.”

Since The Big Golf Race was launched in 2020, more than 10,000 golfers have raised over £3.4 million to help fund life-saving research to radically improve the way prostate cancer is diagnosed and treated.