Chennai’s golf challenge

If there is one word that has ruined golf progress in Chennai that is ‘weather’. Despite having two good courses, the city has not produced any national players. Mercifully, there is a conscious effort to turn things around from the Tamil Nadu Golf Federation (TNGF), which runs a promising junior programme to identify young talents. 

The city had two strong professional tournaments on the tour until seven years ago, both TNGF-Cosmo Annexe and the Madras Gymkhana Course at Guindy hosting golf events on a regular basis. Even the Ladies tour in the South India tournament, which was held in the early 2000s, went to Bangalore because  of cruel weather. 

Refreshingly, after a long drought, the Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI) included one event in the 2016 calendar at the Madras Gymkhana Course after Express Exclusive sponsored the Chennai Open Golf Championship last week. The tournament could well settle into the PGTI calendar and if what PGTI director Uttam Singh Mundy felt after the event, there could be even two events in Chennai next year.

That apart, the scene is not rosy for Chennai golf. C Arul made the cut in the Chennai Open but the big names are not coming. Chinnaswamy Muniyappa is from Tamil Nadu and so are Dharma and Udayan Mane but they have moved to Bangalore for cooler and better conditions. It was a difficult challenge for the Tamil Nadu federation to first produce the talents and then retain them.

“We have one of the best structured programme for the juniors. We have also regular South Indian junior tournaments,” says Jayanan, who has been in charge of the junior programmes for TNGF in the last four years.

The TNGF efforts have started bearing fruits as one of the young boys coming out of the programme has given the results. Prashanth Sridhar, 20, has won the South Indian junior tournament last month and looks set for the professional tour at the moment. 

“Prashanth is a typical junior programme product and the best part is that he is a caddie’s son so he has a good idea of the game,” says Jayanan. The TNGF has a policy of giving golf training free of cost to children who do not belong to the affordable class and Prashanth came under it at the right time to get the benefit of training and facilities. Even for the affordable class, the fee is nominal (Rs 2500 for a month), says Jayanan and adds that watching bigtime golf itself is an education for the children. “Many of our trainees were following Mukesh Kumar at the Guindy course on all the four days of the Chennai Open,” said Jayanan. 

In fact, TNGF will also be looking at students from the unaffordable class for their target results as they will be focused on golf as most of them won’t have another career. They will watch and hear the stories of Muniyappa, Chikkarangappa, Mukesh Kumar and Vijay Kumar, all caddie-turned professionals and pursue it as a career. Udayan Mane feels “the grassroot level” development is essential for the growth of the sport. “Bangalore has made the right move by introducing golf in schools and it has paid rich dividends. The schools programme will take it to a different level,” says Mane. 

Muniyappa has a different concept and that is to have golf in public places. “All that Tamil Nadu needs is a hero and then the growth will be quite fast,” says Muniyappa, who holds the Madras Gymkhana Course close  to his heart.