Unexpected rain and a mad March towards season’s end

CHENNAI: Even as astronomers are excited over the approaching rare alignment of five planets, rare events on the course are already being recorded.

Two things in particular must be recorded here. The first is the unusual rain in mid-March.

A meme, shared widely on WhatsApp last week, said it all. “Rain in March? Really Varuna?” asks the intrepid sage Narada, who wings down from heaven for all earthly matters. A sheepish-looking rain-God replies, “It is the year-end (March 31, financial year-end in this part of the world) and I had to meet the annual target.” While the joke was mildly funny, luckily the unseasonal rain did not heavily impact the game of golf mid-March.

The other noteworthy record is the hole in one on hole 4 at the Cosmo TNGF achieved by two players, in the morning and afternoon sessions on Friday.

Vijay Pai, a veteran golfer with quite a few hole in ones under his hat, had to opt out of the morning four ball, and young Anish Iyer stepped in for him. And on the par 3 hole, he executed a brilliant hole in one.

Pai, who played as a four ball the same afternoon, notched up an ace on the same hole, an occurrence likely to be the rarest of rare achievements in recreational golf.

Anish Iyer after acing hole 4 at Cosmo TNGF.

Ides of March:

March is when most of the courses down South are bone dry and capable of giving a good run on the back of a good carry.

Given the tight schedule at both the courses – the Cosmo TNGF and the Madras Gymkhana Golf Annexe – and the slotting of two back-to-back events, expectations were high among the city golfers.

The unusual rain in March, coming ahead of the Natchimuthu Trophy at the Cosmo TNGF and the Monthly Medal at the Madras Gymkhana Club Golf Annexe, with its own queer pattern threatened to play a dampener.

The overnight drizzle and one hour of low intensity rain during mid-day were the focus of both players and organisers alike.

The rain clouds then moved away, and if the fairways did not offer too much roll, the greens were holding the long approach shots, yielding a nett, even chance for the players.

Good golfers have field day:

The players only needed to tweak their game a bit and apply course correction. A shortfall of a few yards – say about 10 or 15 – necessitated pulling out the longer irons, for some.

Quite a few good players said that it took them a hole or two to get on top of the greens!

The Natchimuthu Trophy, played both morning and evening to accommodate as many players as possible, retained its popularity among the golfers.

Siddarth Lulla won in the Gold division with 40 points, with S Venkatesh coming a close second with 38 points.

The first two slots in the Silver division went to Iqbal Sait and R Mukund while R Dhamodaran and Prabhat Kamal Gupta took the honours in the Bronze category.

There was heartburn too – KS Balasubramanian had a great run, with eight pars, but a couple of bogey holes pushed him further down the leaderboard.

The Raja of Parlakimedi Cup, a limited mixed field event at the Cosmo TNGF with players from all handicap groups playing, is likely to have a larger field this year with 12 qualifiers already identified.

The proverbial David versus Goliath plays out often in this event, with high handicappers humbling low handicappers in ‘a one on one’ game.

The Monthly Medal, held at the MGC last Sunday, saw very good scores in the Open category. Winner Arun Murugappan posted 74 gross while Gaurav Syal was the runner up, also with 74 gross.

The Gold division saw stellar players such as Hemant Kumar Sinha and Muthu Venkatachalam post 71 Nett, while Sandip Chakraborthy and Karun Jacob took the first two spots in the Silver division.

With 67 Nett, Arun Vangal topped the Bronze division, while ‘Allsec’ Saravanan was the winner in the Senior category.

For others, the takeaway was the special camaraderie this season brings.