KEY POINTS:
Some people have what is known as a sunny disposition. Kaye Maxwell, former New Zealand champion golfer, has such sunniness that you almost reach for a bottle of factor-30 sunblock.
She also has one of the best-kept secrets in Auckland and New Zealand golf - her beautiful 9-hole golf course at Ramarama, South Auckland, where she and husband Mark Potter have fashioned something unique. It's a secret because, as Maxwell admits with her trademark frankness, she's been far too busy enjoying the fruits of their labour, rather than getting on and making it run.
It's no wonder. There is a feeling of tranquillity as soon as foot is set on Maxwell's Golf Retreat. She is opening up the Retreat to attract corporate clients - teams from companieswhich might have a business, staff or brainstorming meeting that they want to mix with pleasure; a round of golf; maybe some of the trademark Maxwell coaching and personality; lunch and/or dinner.
The retreat is different because it is solely a par-3 course although Potter, originally a builder, is fashioning a new par-4 hole. The mistake many make is to think of a par-3 course as easy. Think again. Only one person - and he a pro golfer - has gone round under par since the course opened in 2004, after the pair converted it from a farm.
Maxwell originally built it to catch a wave emanating from the USA - where par-3 courses caught on and where golfers could even get a handicap. But the golf authorities in New Zealand did not make the same move, so the indefatigable Maxwell simply changed course.
On a course accessible to everyone from novices to scratch golfers, she added a range, training facilities, a golf academy, a shop, meeting rooms, bar and dining rooms - all liberally splashed with laughter.
Maxwell likes to laugh and indulges herself often. It's there in her coaching style, too - easy, low-key, non-threatening; a word she uses a lot. For many new to golf, the pressure of such a ritualised, sometimes snobbish sport comes to a needle-sharp point when they are standing on the first tee, praying they don't make a total hash of it in front of the silent stare of other golfers waiting to tee off. Maxwell's fun-based style relaxes her pupils.
"I like it to be a non-threatening environment," she says."It's a tough enough game without that. Our first tee is screened from the clubhouse for that reason. It's for safety too, of course, but it works both ways."
With a corporate group, Maxwell will often split the company into experienced golfers or novices, coach the novices and give the more experienced tips. She runs a coaching academy for golfers - both sexes but women often come to learn the game through her easy coaching style.
It's a wonder Maxwell still has massive reserves of laughter and sunniness - but that is what has probably pulled her through the darker times.
Her first marriage broke up, she suffered at the hands of a vindictive selector when it came to playing for New Zealand at golf and she withstood the unmitigated trauma of losing her baby daughter when, at nearly full term pregnancy, she slipped on a deck and the baby had to be delivered early.
"I think I might have suffered a breakdown then," she says. "I didn't know it then but I am pretty sure that's what it was. I couldn't even go out to get the clothes off the washing line."
That was about 20 years ago when counselling services were not as advanced as they are now, and Maxwell eventually told herself: "You just have to work your way through this."
She did. After not touching a club for an age, she turned up at the Auckland Golf Club's championship - and won; then won the champion of champions tournament as well.
It wasn't her first reverse in life, nor her first comeback. Aged 22 when she won the NZ matchplay championship in dramatic fashion in 1977, Maxwell made national teams but fell foul of officialdom.
After a trip to Australia where they were beaten by an Australian team whose coach was also a player (in contrast to a NZ team whose manager was what Maxwell calls, with disarming honesty, 'an old biddy'), she was elected spokesperson to go to the authorities.
The players wanted someone closer to the players in terms of age and ability. It wasn't a popular request. One of the national selectors said: 'You'll be sorry you said that...'.
She was. That selector, as was the way in those days, had a reign that lasted years and Maxwell was overlooked for national teams. But all that seems an age away when you sit at her Retreat, with the sun going down over the hills, a glass of wine in hand and Maxwell's ready laugh ringing out.
She's found her niche, all right. Much of the golfing and corporate world don't know about it yet.
But it is unlikely to be much of a secret much longer.
