CHARITY PARTNER

Tommy Does Golf: Our Charity Partner - Prostate Cancer

Playing the back nine

Right then. Settle in.
This one matters more than any major championship. More than that hole-in-one you're still talking about. More than golf, full stop. We're talking about staying in the game long enough to play the back nine with the people who matter to you.

Tommy Does Golf has decided to make prostate cancer our official charity partner. Now, you might wonder why we picked this fight. It's simple. Look at your dad. Your brother. Your uncle. Your son. Your golfing mates - the ones you give relentless stick to on the course and sink a beer with after. Statistically, 1 in 8 men will face prostate cancer in their lifetime. That's not just a number—that's someone in your club, someone in your family, maybe even the bloke reading this right now.
Globally, we're talking 1.4 million new cases every year. The numbers are staggering, but here's the thing—they don't have to be.

What you need to know

When caught early, before it's spread beyond the prostate, the five-year survival rate is close to 100%. That's not a hopeful estimate. That's cold, hard fact. Early detection changes everything. So how do we catch it early?

The examination men love to hate

Right. Let's talk about the bit nobody wants to discuss. The digital rectal examination. The DRE. The one we all make jokes about to avoid having to actually think about it. Here's the thing, and this matters, the PSA blood test is brilliant. It's saved thousands of lives. But it's not perfect. Some aggressive prostate cancers don't raise PSA levels significantly. They fly under the radar. They hide. And by the time they make themselves known, you're not in the early detection window anymore. You're playing catch-up with much longer odds. That's where the physical exam comes in. The doctor can actually feel if something's not right; if there's a hardness, a lump, an irregularity that the blood test might have missed entirely. The two tests together? That's the gold standard. That's how you catch the ones that would otherwise slip through.

So what are we saying?

Ask for it. Specifically. The doctor might assume you don't want it - most men don't. Be the bloke who says, "While we're at it, do the full job." Yes, it's a few seconds of awkwardness. But weigh that against decades of Christmases, birthdays, and walking fairways with the people who'd be lost without you. It's not even close. We're normalising this by talking about it. By being grown-ups. By recognising that a moment's discomfort is a small price for the peace of mind - or the early warning - that could literally save your life.

A word on grit

Think about the women in your life. They go for smear tests. They go for mammograms. No woman pretends those are a day at the beach. But they do it because they know it might save them. It's time we took one for the team too. And the team we're taking one for? Our families. The people who rely on us. The people who want us around.

When to start

The conversation starts at 40 if you've got family history; if you're of African or Caribbean descent your risk is significantly higher, and we need to be honest about that. For most blokes, by 45 or 50, you need to be having the chat with your GP.
We know it's easy to put off. Life's busy. The test can wait. But here's the truth they don't put on the posters—most men don't have symptoms until it's too late. By the time you're getting up three times a night or feeling that ache, you're not in the early detection window anymore. You're playing catch-up.