Everything I know about morality and the friendship of men, I owe to golf. With apologies to Albert Camus – the novelist and part-time goalkeeper who famously said a very similar thing about football – I make this claim with little exaggeration.
Without golf in my life, I very much doubt that my male friendships would be as close, as well-maintained or as bountiful. And in a world that becomes more atomised by the day, I might otherwise face the sting of what is now called the male friendship recession.
Surveys have identified this as an unwelcome feature of modern society. A major study by Harvard University concluded that relationships, more than money or fame, is what keep people happy throughout their lives, and that men find it harder than women to preserve friendships.
Another research project discovered that the percentage of men with at least six close friends has fallen by half since 1990, from 55 per cent to 27 per cent, and the percentage of men without any close friends jumped from 3 per cent to 15 per cent. These are dramatic figures, and speak to the fact that, at the same time, depression and associated mental health problems among men has spiralled.
In later life, it’s a particular problem. The biographer AN Wilson recently lamented the fact that men don’t have the skills and the social spaces any longer to form friendships. To which, I heard myself saying: “He’s obviously not a golfer.”
Golf is a difficult, relatively expensive and, regrettably, sometimes exclusive sport. It can be an unforgiving consort. But it teaches you self-discipline, honesty and courtesy, is a means to escape the rigours of everyday life, and, most important, allows you to form friendships with people of vastly different backgrounds and outlooks.
I was a member of a golf club where my regular four-ball included a long-distance lorry driver, a vet and an asbestos surveyor. We became good, lifelong friends. We had golf in common.
Now, once a week, and sometimes more, I spend a whole afternoon with a group of male friends engaged in a healthy, diverting and all-consuming pastime. The chances of my getting a friend, any friend, to commit that amount of time to our friendship would be almost nil.
Let’s go for a companionable, four-hour walk together, I’d say. “Are you stark raving mad?” would come the reply. It’s the collective endeavour that sport offers – which Camus identified – that legitimises our devotion, and of course the beauty of golf is that it’s something you can do right up until the dying of the light.
Don’t get me wrong. This is not friendship as a woman, perhaps, might characterise it. There is, usually, no sharing of confidences. In fact, we often don’t discuss anything remotely personal. We might touch on politics or work, but I can honestly say that in all the countless hours I’ve spent on a golf course, I’ve never had a proper, meaningful conversation with a friend about his relationship to anything other than to his golf swing or his putting stroke. How’s your wife? She’s fine. That’s the exchange on the first fairway, which establishes the framework for the next few hours of discussion. No requirement to go there again.
The American comedian Brian Regan has a routine which perfectly encapsulates this aspect of golf, and indeed men. A man returns home to his female companion after having played with a friend of theirs, recently divorced.
“How is Gary?” she asks. “I don’t know,” he answers. “But weren’t you together for four hours today?” “Yes, but it never came up.” “Is he dating anyone?” “I don’t know. But I do know he’s got a new driver.”
This is not to identify men as shallow, superficial beings incapable of sharing feelings (although some of us might be). There is something intensely personal about spending so much time with someone.
It’s the simple act of being together on a golf course – the fellowship, if you like – that makes this connection valuable, increasingly rare, and, in a fractured world, extremely precious.
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