Chennai
Golf may be a rich man’s sport but if you go through Muniyappa’s course journey, you will change the opinion. Born in a small village in Dharmapuri, Muniyappa is a Tamilian but his golf links are with Karnataka, where he found his profession as a small boy and grew in stature. Muniyappa’s parents were from the working class but lack of rain in the area forced them to move to Karnataka in search of a job. At the age of five, Muniyappa got his first taste of golf when his ‘chittappa’ (father’s brother) told him the Karnataka Golf Association course in Bangalore was looking for ball boys. You get paid a rupee for a round but for the boy that was good enough.
From a ball boy to caddie was easy switch for the young Muniyappa as he got the big break with the passage of time and slowly he started to look at it as his profession. Hundred rupees for a day for four hours was a big leap and Muniyappa but the trend those days caught up with him too as he learned more about the sport. Caddies were turning professionals in good numbers and rocking on the tour. Players such as Ali Sher, Vijayakumar and Mukesh Kumar were living out of golf and it was natural that Muniyappa also noticed these changes.
“If you hear my story, you will realise that golf is a poor man’s sport too,” said Muniyappa as he came out a prize of Rs one lakh at the Chennai Open golf championship last week for his eighth place. “A golf kit may cost Rs 50,000 to 70,000 which is costlier than a cricket kit, so if you take to the sport as a youngster, you need a lot of support. On the one hand, we have players, who were born with facilities in army background. On the other, you have our cases too… the players who grew up on the course watching the professionals, helping them. We turned players rather late,” he added, in Tamil.
Gradually, Muniyappa started playing in the caddies tournaments in KGA and by 1997, he got his major break as he made his debut in Professional golf at the Madras Gymkhana course in Chennai. In fact, he became the most prominent player from the south in the next 10 years and capped his run with a stunning Asian Tour win in the Hero Honda Indian Open in New Delhi which gave him a whopping Rs 93 lakh purse. The previous year he had won the Toyota event at his own KGA course. “I came in the top 10 in the Order of Merit in 2005 and 2006. I went to Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Korea and London for golf.” He is happy he has done his part to promote the game in the south but he feels it needs a bigger push to attract more talents. “People have heard that I was successful in golf and came to me for advice, so we need more stories like mine so the children take to the sport,” says the golfer, whose words were clothed in contentment.
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