(Image courtesy: New Indian Express)One man. Fourteen Clubs. Eighteen holes. It turned out to be a day when records didn’t break, but as L Suresh made his way to each hole, a myth exploded …
Hole 1
Big boys play at night
The day the grass stops being greener on the other side, you know you’re standing bang in the middle of a sprawling golf course. That’s the day you realise that you’ve arrived in life – and most importantly, you got there in a golf cart. The path to glory has been paved with sacrifices – you’ve sacrificed cricket for golf and have started making (up) fashionable excuses for not watching a cricket match - “Anyways, we are going to lose” or “What’s the point, all these matches are fixed”. You’ve realised that while big boys play at night, the smart ones play by noon. So, when you’re moving up the corporate ladder, you really don’t mind forsaking the D stand for a glass cabin, do you?
Hole 2
Golf is easy to understand
Yeah? A chilli dip means hitting behind the ball so that it doesn't go very far. Honors refers to the person with the lowest score on the previous hole who gets to tee off first. There are others – jail, lie, casual water, blade, juice, airmail, cabbage, backdoor, dance floor, fried egg…So before you play the game, be prepared to learn a new language.
Hole 3
What you say is what you mean
When you ‘address the ball’, don’t try to talk to it. Just take your stance and get ready to hit the ball. And when you hear the word ‘hazard’, rest easy – it wasn’t meant to be a description of you on the golf course, someone was just referring to a sand pit or a pond – that golfers have to be careful about. Lastly, when you see someone get uppity on the green, don’t ask him to take a chill pill. What you’re asking him to do is swallow a cold golf ball. So take care – what you say may not be what you ‘actually want to say’.
Hole 4
You know all - about the birds and the bees
Well, you could keep the bees away, but as for the birdies – well, when a man’s gotta know, a man’s gotta know. Albatross, eagle, duckhook, clawgrip… In fact, a few centuries back, the golf ball was stuffed with feathers and called the feathery. So, while trying to come to terms with the gator grip, frog hair, skin, skull and other subtle references to the animal kingdom, we insist that you brush up on terminology relating to the feathered kind.
Hole 5
There’s nothing technical about golf
Before you tee off, tell us what the following mean and you’re sure to get a hole-in-one - COR (Coefficient of Restitution), MOI (Moment of Inertia), Molten Metal Weighting Technology, S2H2 (Short, Straight, Hollow, Hosel), Stronomic Insert, X factor and Cast Thermoset Urethane. Golf comes in with a load of technology and if you try to understand it all, chances are, you’ll never have the time to set foot on a golf course.
Hole 6
Golf stands for Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden
Oops, don’t say that aloud. Women stormed the supposed male bastion more than a hundred years ago and have been there and done that ever since. The Brits dominated the game for almost three decades, after which the Americans took over. (Did someone say something about history repeating itself?) Joyce Wethered, Patty Berg, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Betty Jameson, Nancy Lopez, Michelle McGann, Betsy King, Laura Davies, Annika Sorenstam and Karrie Webb have all added a new meaning to the phrase ‘Ladies Clubs’.
Hole 7
If it’s the Queen’s rule, then women never had it so good
The British Open organized by the Royal and Ancient Club still disallows women from participating (so they have the Weetabix Women's British Open) – someday the Queen, Her Majesty, will reconcile to the fact that the Prince can remarry and that women can play golf.
Hole 8
Golf's the name of the game
Kolf, kolve, golve, gowl, gouf, paganica, het kolven, chole, jeu de mail, cambuca… When a game has so many names the world over and over the years, you can’t blame people for not cottoning on to it – like cricket!
Hole 9
Golf is for grownups
Why wait for our ‘seniors’ to break into the top ten when we can get our kids to do it for us? Finally, we have a No. 2 star in the horizon - Viraat Badhwar, a seven-year-old, and the second best golfer in the world under the age of eight. Tanya Wadhwa - a nine-year-old became the first to complete a Grand Slam of title wins in junior world golf history. And last year, thirteen-year-old Vaishnavi Sinha became the youngest golfer in the country’s top ten as she reached Number 7.
Hole 10
Cricket’s the game that brings in celebrities
Madhavan, Kapil Dev, Shekhar Suman, Aditi Gowatrikar, Tony Greig, G.R. Vishwanath, Syed Kirmani, E.A.S. Prasanna, Geet Sethi, Suresh Oberoi, Rakesh Sharma (India’s first spaceman), Milkha Singh, Charu Sharma, Ashish Ballal – that’s a long list, but not the complete one, of celebrities who have taken to golf in a big way – enough to play in celebrity tournaments. And one thought film stars and politicans playing cricket matches made the biggest news.
Hole 11
A game of golf is great exercise
There are only two reasons why people (like you and me) play golf – for business or for pleasure. Golf courses have been the second most important place in the corporate world where crucial decisions, key mergers and major acquisitions happen. (The top honour for this goes to the men’s room.) And as far as the second reason goes, the real pleasure of playing golf comes much later – at office parties and college reunions when name-dropping attracts a wide-eyed audience. That’s when Randy (Jyoti Randhawa), Raf (Rafick Ali) and Shiv (Shiv Shankar Prasad Chowrasia) become one’s bum chums.
Hole 12
India – there’s life beyond cricket
That’s like saying there’s life on Mars. As far as golf goes, we’ve mastered the art of marketing, advertising, conducting, sponsoring and telecasting the game – the only thing we need to do is catch up on playing it as well. The good news is that the top four Indians in the big league are Vijay Singh (2), Jyoti Randhawa (84), Daniel Chopra (181) and Dinesh Chand (213). The bad news is that except for Randhawa, the rest are just ‘global’ Indians – Singh(Fiji), Chopra (Sweden) and Chand (Fiji). If you can’t create success, adopt it. Haven’t we done that before?
Hole 13
If it’s golf, it must be Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods may be the most popular golfer today, but there are other stars in the firmament. Bobby Jones, the first player ever to win the United States Open, the British Open, the United States Amateur and the British Amateur tournaments in one year. Walter Hagen, the first to earn over a million dollars by playing. Ben Hogan, who won the 1950 U.S. Open, despite having fractured his left collarbone, left ankle, pelvis, and a rib. The Golden Bear, Jack Nicklaus, the first player to win the Grand Slam twice. Arnold Palmer, the first player to win the Masters tournament four times. The hall of fame is larger than you think it is…
Hole 14
You can never be in Sachin’s league
Playing golf may not make you as famous as Sachin, but you can suffer from equally famous ailments like the tennis elbow. However, there are several helpful instructions that can keep a tennis elbow at bay. But it’s up to you to choose between being fit and becoming famous.
Hole 15
Choose a ball by its number
Try doing that and you’ll go mad keeping count. Golf balls have one, two or three-digit numbers printed on them. A single digit is there for you to identify the ball. The two-digit numbers indicate the level of compression of the ball. And the three-digit numbers tell you how many dimples there are on the ball.
Hole 16
There’s a reason why every golf course has 18 holes
If there’s one, it’s yet to be found. There was a time when golf courses had any number of holes – from 12 to twice that number. The year was 1764. The place, St. Andrews (where the British Open takes place). To make it easier for players, 22 holes were reduced to 18. And it became a standard. Hundred years later, almost every golf course conformed to this rule. (Would it have taken them that long to dig extra holes or fill the redundant ones?)
Hole 17
India didn’t know about golf for a long time
We may still not ‘know much about golf’, but the fact is that we were the first country outside Great Britain to take up the game of golf. The royal Calcutta Golf Club, the oldest golf club in India, was established in 1829 – even before the Royal & Ancient Golf Club at St. Andrews! We may not be the best, but we were certainly the first.
Hole 1
Big boys play at night
The day the grass stops being greener on the other side, you know you’re standing bang in the middle of a sprawling golf course. That’s the day you realise that you’ve arrived in life – and most importantly, you got there in a golf cart. The path to glory has been paved with sacrifices – you’ve sacrificed cricket for golf and have started making (up) fashionable excuses for not watching a cricket match - “Anyways, we are going to lose” or “What’s the point, all these matches are fixed”. You’ve realised that while big boys play at night, the smart ones play by noon. So, when you’re moving up the corporate ladder, you really don’t mind forsaking the D stand for a glass cabin, do you?
Hole 2
Golf is easy to understand
Yeah? A chilli dip means hitting behind the ball so that it doesn't go very far. Honors refers to the person with the lowest score on the previous hole who gets to tee off first. There are others – jail, lie, casual water, blade, juice, airmail, cabbage, backdoor, dance floor, fried egg…So before you play the game, be prepared to learn a new language.
Hole 3
What you say is what you mean
When you ‘address the ball’, don’t try to talk to it. Just take your stance and get ready to hit the ball. And when you hear the word ‘hazard’, rest easy – it wasn’t meant to be a description of you on the golf course, someone was just referring to a sand pit or a pond – that golfers have to be careful about. Lastly, when you see someone get uppity on the green, don’t ask him to take a chill pill. What you’re asking him to do is swallow a cold golf ball. So take care – what you say may not be what you ‘actually want to say’.
Hole 4
You know all - about the birds and the bees
Well, you could keep the bees away, but as for the birdies – well, when a man’s gotta know, a man’s gotta know. Albatross, eagle, duckhook, clawgrip… In fact, a few centuries back, the golf ball was stuffed with feathers and called the feathery. So, while trying to come to terms with the gator grip, frog hair, skin, skull and other subtle references to the animal kingdom, we insist that you brush up on terminology relating to the feathered kind.
Hole 5
There’s nothing technical about golf
Before you tee off, tell us what the following mean and you’re sure to get a hole-in-one - COR (Coefficient of Restitution), MOI (Moment of Inertia), Molten Metal Weighting Technology, S2H2 (Short, Straight, Hollow, Hosel), Stronomic Insert, X factor and Cast Thermoset Urethane. Golf comes in with a load of technology and if you try to understand it all, chances are, you’ll never have the time to set foot on a golf course.
Hole 6
Golf stands for Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden
Oops, don’t say that aloud. Women stormed the supposed male bastion more than a hundred years ago and have been there and done that ever since. The Brits dominated the game for almost three decades, after which the Americans took over. (Did someone say something about history repeating itself?) Joyce Wethered, Patty Berg, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Betty Jameson, Nancy Lopez, Michelle McGann, Betsy King, Laura Davies, Annika Sorenstam and Karrie Webb have all added a new meaning to the phrase ‘Ladies Clubs’.
Hole 7
If it’s the Queen’s rule, then women never had it so good
The British Open organized by the Royal and Ancient Club still disallows women from participating (so they have the Weetabix Women's British Open) – someday the Queen, Her Majesty, will reconcile to the fact that the Prince can remarry and that women can play golf.
Hole 8
Golf's the name of the game
Kolf, kolve, golve, gowl, gouf, paganica, het kolven, chole, jeu de mail, cambuca… When a game has so many names the world over and over the years, you can’t blame people for not cottoning on to it – like cricket!
Hole 9
Golf is for grownups
Why wait for our ‘seniors’ to break into the top ten when we can get our kids to do it for us? Finally, we have a No. 2 star in the horizon - Viraat Badhwar, a seven-year-old, and the second best golfer in the world under the age of eight. Tanya Wadhwa - a nine-year-old became the first to complete a Grand Slam of title wins in junior world golf history. And last year, thirteen-year-old Vaishnavi Sinha became the youngest golfer in the country’s top ten as she reached Number 7.
Hole 10
Cricket’s the game that brings in celebrities
Madhavan, Kapil Dev, Shekhar Suman, Aditi Gowatrikar, Tony Greig, G.R. Vishwanath, Syed Kirmani, E.A.S. Prasanna, Geet Sethi, Suresh Oberoi, Rakesh Sharma (India’s first spaceman), Milkha Singh, Charu Sharma, Ashish Ballal – that’s a long list, but not the complete one, of celebrities who have taken to golf in a big way – enough to play in celebrity tournaments. And one thought film stars and politicans playing cricket matches made the biggest news.
Hole 11
A game of golf is great exercise
There are only two reasons why people (like you and me) play golf – for business or for pleasure. Golf courses have been the second most important place in the corporate world where crucial decisions, key mergers and major acquisitions happen. (The top honour for this goes to the men’s room.) And as far as the second reason goes, the real pleasure of playing golf comes much later – at office parties and college reunions when name-dropping attracts a wide-eyed audience. That’s when Randy (Jyoti Randhawa), Raf (Rafick Ali) and Shiv (Shiv Shankar Prasad Chowrasia) become one’s bum chums.
Hole 12
India – there’s life beyond cricket
That’s like saying there’s life on Mars. As far as golf goes, we’ve mastered the art of marketing, advertising, conducting, sponsoring and telecasting the game – the only thing we need to do is catch up on playing it as well. The good news is that the top four Indians in the big league are Vijay Singh (2), Jyoti Randhawa (84), Daniel Chopra (181) and Dinesh Chand (213). The bad news is that except for Randhawa, the rest are just ‘global’ Indians – Singh(Fiji), Chopra (Sweden) and Chand (Fiji). If you can’t create success, adopt it. Haven’t we done that before?
Hole 13
If it’s golf, it must be Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods may be the most popular golfer today, but there are other stars in the firmament. Bobby Jones, the first player ever to win the United States Open, the British Open, the United States Amateur and the British Amateur tournaments in one year. Walter Hagen, the first to earn over a million dollars by playing. Ben Hogan, who won the 1950 U.S. Open, despite having fractured his left collarbone, left ankle, pelvis, and a rib. The Golden Bear, Jack Nicklaus, the first player to win the Grand Slam twice. Arnold Palmer, the first player to win the Masters tournament four times. The hall of fame is larger than you think it is…
Hole 14
You can never be in Sachin’s league
Playing golf may not make you as famous as Sachin, but you can suffer from equally famous ailments like the tennis elbow. However, there are several helpful instructions that can keep a tennis elbow at bay. But it’s up to you to choose between being fit and becoming famous.
Hole 15
Choose a ball by its number
Try doing that and you’ll go mad keeping count. Golf balls have one, two or three-digit numbers printed on them. A single digit is there for you to identify the ball. The two-digit numbers indicate the level of compression of the ball. And the three-digit numbers tell you how many dimples there are on the ball.
Hole 16
There’s a reason why every golf course has 18 holes
If there’s one, it’s yet to be found. There was a time when golf courses had any number of holes – from 12 to twice that number. The year was 1764. The place, St. Andrews (where the British Open takes place). To make it easier for players, 22 holes were reduced to 18. And it became a standard. Hundred years later, almost every golf course conformed to this rule. (Would it have taken them that long to dig extra holes or fill the redundant ones?)
Hole 17
India didn’t know about golf for a long time
We may still not ‘know much about golf’, but the fact is that we were the first country outside Great Britain to take up the game of golf. The royal Calcutta Golf Club, the oldest golf club in India, was established in 1829 – even before the Royal & Ancient Golf Club at St. Andrews! We may not be the best, but we were certainly the first.
Hole 18
There are just 18 holes in any golf course
That was a whammy, because it doesn’t cover the most important place in the golf course – the 19th hole or the clubhouse bar. This is one place where you can beat everyone to it – Tiger Woods included. And the shot of the day could well be one with Tequila and sliced lime.
(Appeared in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 01 May, 2005)
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