Despite its arrival in India almost two centuries ago, golf has always been a niche hobby. Well, as younger Indians, that’s slowly changing.
Despite its arrival in India almost two centuries ago, golf has always been a niche hobby. Well, as younger Indians, that’s slowly changing.
On the first Saturday in August 2021 something unprecedented happened. Indian Twitter was passionate about golf: a topic it hardly cares about. Typically, a live match in India receives less attention than, say, the highlights of a 20-year-old cricket match. But that Saturday, at 2 a.m. IST, the Indians were up, looking up definitions of birdies and bogeys, reading explanations and updating the rankings. They all gave a name. #AditiAshok. A 23-year-old Indian golfer on the verge of winning a historic Olympic medal in Tokyo had tens of thousands in the early hours watching a sport they had never seen before.
Aditi agonizingly missed out on a medal on the final day, finishing fourth. But she came close – close enough to marginalize her countrymen from their seats, close enough to slightly raise the profile of her sport in her country. Her performance signaled the drifting away of golf as an “elite sport for old men” in India.
Greetings to Aditi Ashok:
🔸 200th player in the world
🔸 Her caddy at #Tokyo2020 was her mother 🥰
🔸 Fighting for a medal in #golf until the end
👏👏👏#IND pic.twitter.com/Um63O321DB
— The Olympics (@Olympics) August 7, 2021
A Brief History of the Indian Gulf
Golf in India is old. Very old. Older than India itself if you consider August 15, 1947 as the country’s date of birth. It predates even the First World War and, in sporting history, the World Cup, the Wimbledon tennis championships and the very first modern Olympic Games.
One of the earliest colonial imports, the British brought golf to the subcontinent in 1829 when they founded the Royal Calcutta Golf Club. (It is the oldest golf club in the world outside of Britain.) Other clubs soon sprung up in different directions – the Royal Bombay Golf Club in 1842, the Bangalore Golf Club in 1876 and the Madras Gymkhana Golf Club in 1877.
All of this while golf didn’t even exist in the United States, which is now considered the leading nation in the sport. Europe was still being introduced to it. India, on the other hand, had nearly half a dozen fully functioning clubs by the early 20th century.
However, golf has remained largely a wealthy game from its inception. The high cost of memberships, course fees, equipment, and supplies made the sport exclusive to the upper class. This is particularly true in India, where the gap between rich and poor is wider than in the major golfing nations. Most of the courses here are difficult to access as they are either owned by private clubs that charge a high membership fee or by the Indian Army. A golf set containing a driver, a wood, a hybrid, seven sets of irons and a putter costs between £40,000 and £2,000,000 in India.
Due to its exclusiveness to the elite, golf has never become popular in India. There has been sporadic success at the professional level, only a handful of internationally recognized Indian names and very few youngsters who have taken up the sport.
However, Indian golf is changing.
Not all clubs are the same
Woods are used to hit long shots.
The driver is the largest wood in the kit.
Irons are used for shorter shots than woods.
Wedges are just special irons for certain loft shots.
Hybrids offer the long distance and higher launch of the wood and the easy swing of the iron.
A putter is used to put the ball in the hole.
The effects of COVID
Aside from Aditi’s Olympic exploits, there was another key catalyst in the past year that helped spur the growth of golf in India: the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Golf in India has experienced a huge resurgence in the last two years,” said Romit Bose, President of the Professional Golfers’ Association of India (PGAI). “We’ve seen a triple increase in equipment sales, facility usage, and the number of people coming into play. It’s the biggest surge India has ever seen.” He says at least 200 people come to play at his newly established academy at Delhi’s Siri Fort Golf Driving Range every day. At weekends, this number increases by at least 1.5 times.
“Compared to pre-pandemic numbers, the golf equipment industry has grown by 25 to 30 percent,” says Ateet Gaur, Founder of Trinity Golf India, distributor of some of the world’s leading golf brands. “We are seeing more sales not only in Metros but also in some smaller cities like Nasik, Kanpur, Meerut, Bathinda and Bikaner. Because there are courses within defense areas that also allow civilians to play. ”
Hamza Yunus, golf director at Prestige Prestige Golfshire Club in Bengaluru, also reports an increase in bookings after 2020. “We used to barely touch 180 on the weekends before the pandemic. Now we get more than 210 bookings.”
But how has the pandemic helped increase those numbers?
Romit offers an explanation. “The pandemic has pushed us to focus on health and fitness. People wanted to learn a new sport. As golf is played with minimal human contact it was safe too. So we got new participants,” he adds, “COVID has also brought back a lot of people – let’s say older business people – who had given up golf in their 30s and 40s. These people suddenly had more time at their disposal. So they picked up their racquets again.”
Young blood
The performances of players like Jeev Milkha Singh and Arjun Atwal in the 2000s spurred on young talent. Indian golf’s baton has largely been carried since the 2010s by Anirban Lahiri, who has 18 international titles. The 34-year-old will now be joined by Shubhankar Sharma (25) and Aditi (24) as the flag bearers of Indian golf.
“Success breeds success,” says Bibhuti Bhushan, Director General of the Indian Golf Union (IGU), the national sporting governing body for golf. “The achievements of the current generation of players like Anirban and Aditi have sparked tremendous interest in the sport and serve as motivation.”
Pranavi Urs, 19, from Mysuru is one such example. She was among tens of thousands who campaigned for Aditi to win an Olympic medal in Tokyo. “Even though she missed out on a medal, I think it was a big step forward for golf in India, especially for women,” she says.
Pranavi says golf is no longer a sport for old men. “There is a lot more emphasis on fitness. It’s gotten more physical. A lot more youngsters, especially girls, are willing to try it. My school friends, who never understood the sport back then, play it now. Golf is a sport that is difficult to explain to others, but once you start playing you will absolutely love it.”
Pranavi currently plays in the Ladies European Tour (LET) Access Series, the official development tour for the LET series. She took up the sport at the age of five after regularly watching her father and brother tee off. That’s a different thing with Indian golfers – most of them are usually introduced to the sport by their fathers. Or they have an army background. And almost all of them come from wealthy families. But there are exceptions, albeit a handful.
popularization of the sport
The history of Chikkarangappa is among the most remarkable in the Indian Gulf. His father, Seenappa, was a mason and worked at Eagleton Golf Resort in Bengaluru. Due to financial constraints at home, young Chikkarangappa also lent a hand, working as a ball boy at the same resort for less than £50 a day.
The boy, wanting to emulate the players he observed every day, once took a racquet and swung it violently at the ball. He thought no one was watching. But there was one eyewitness: Vijay Divecha, the resident coach. Divecha was impressed by the 11-year-old’s untrained but admirable shot and promised Chikkarangappa that he would support him if he took up the sport.
The bricklayer’s son is now among the top 10 professional golfers in the country. “I was lucky. I was in the right place at the right time,” he says. Apart from a top-class coach like Divecha, he had the support of the golf resort he worked for. “I had access to good facilities, equipment and mentors. But it’s definitely not easy when you come from a non-golfing background. It’s a long, hard road to the top and you have to sacrifice a lot.”
Despite seeing more newcomers now compared to his early days in golf, 28-year-old Chikkarangappa feels it’s still difficult for someone outside the upper class to break through. He thinks the sport needs to be more accessible and popular.
“This cannot be done without government intervention,” says Rashid Khan, another top 10 Indian golfer. “In cricket, BCCI takes care of everything. Also for a few other sports in India they have a real body that takes care of things like appointing the right coaches. We don’t have that in golf.” Although bodies such as the IGU, PGAI and Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI) exist, they are not financially robust and therefore limited in their power.
Rashid is also calling for more golf courses. There are currently 2,00,000 golfers (amateur and professional) and 231 golf courses in India according to IGU. That’s around 866 golfers per course. And not all courses are accessible to everyone. In other words, not every golfer easily finds a place to play.
However, setting up a new course costs millions. Romit therefore proposes to focus on creating new driving ranges instead of golf courses. Unlike a course that requires acres of land, a driving range only requires the area of a cricket pitch. “It’s like having tennis courts in the community. They can have a big stadium like Roland Garros, but we need more pitches that are entry points into the game.”
Driving ranges are also much cheaper than a typical golf course, where green fees typically cost a few thousand. At Romit’s Academy, you can hit balls for less than ₹200 — for less than ₹120 if you’re a student. Most of his clients are between 22 and 32 years old.
Private golf courses also offer special discounts to attract youth. For example, membership for golfers under the age of 18 at the Prestige Golfshire Club costs 50% less than the regular membership fee.
“It’s a myth that golf is a rich man’s game,” said Brandon D’Souza, president of the Golf Industries Association. He agrees with Romit that he has more driving ranges. Aside from that, he also suggests promoting golf tourism both at home and abroad. “Instead of going to Europe, we can have our golfers travel to Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad or even Kodaikkanal and Ootacamund.” Romit and Brandon also want clubs to promote domestic leagues a la IPL. “It should be fun and entertaining to attract people,” says Romit.
Indian golf still has a long way to go. Recently, however, the signs are encouraging. Players, golfpreneurs and administrators believe it’s never been better. As Chikkarangappa says, it’s the right time to make the game more inclusive. “We need to develop a system where a youngster from any background can easily participate in sports. So we can find more talent. It will take a long time to take care of them. But if we start now, one of them would give us an Olympic medal in 20 to 25 years.”
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