Feature
END OF THE YEAR REFLECTIONS
by Digraj Singh
The Author is a Golf Entrepreneur and consultant. Has coached and also presented on golf.
Represented India in Amateur golf. Won the National Games and Sri Lanka National titles.
I remember coming back
from the Yale School Of
Management Golf Summit
several years back, better
informed about the world
golf scenario. And with new
ideas on what we could do to grow the
sport in India. What was interesting
to note was the way the summit was
formatted, with industry leaders
speaking and sharing and also refl ecting
on the state of the industry, which was
experiencing high levels of attrition and
negative growth. Interestingly summits
like this and efforts of the leading
organisations like the PGA of America,
USPGA, LPGA, to come together and
work together to raise awareness of the
sport has led to results with the sport
showing a positive growth after nearly
a decade of decline. As we come to
the end of the year, it’s useful for us in
India to take a status check on what’s
happening in the world of Indian golf.
And I am going to quote some random
points to highlight some necessary
action points. For a country our size,
with a fairly old legacy of golf, after
all we have the oldest golf course in
the world outside of the UK, we have a
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D E C E M B ER
really small population playing golf.
And very few courses too. And the
majority of them are thanks to the
Armed forces. In fact the sport has
survived and also produced some
champions thanks to the Armed
forces. The courses belonging to the
Armed forces continue to provide an
opportunity, albeit a limited one, to the
kids belonging to the services families
and the inherent discipline and
commitment to hard work refl ected
by the services culture has seen this
pipeline produce the largest number
of champions in the last decade or
so. Jeev, Anirban, Shubhankar, Jyoti
Randhawa and several others are
from services backgrounds and have
respected the opportunity they had
and produced results inspite of several
other constraints. In fact services
golf in India is now perhaps one of
the main pipelines for producing
champions . And this pipeline
has replaced the caddy pipeline,
constrained as they are with restricted
access to play and the high costs of
quality equipment and competing.
The lifeline for talent from amongst
these underprivileged kids has come
in the form of the Golf Foundation
which has done a remarkable job of
nurturing and mentoring these talented
kids and have produced tremendous
results. The point I wish to make is
that we have committed groups which
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are making a difference in their own
way with whatever resources they
have in their disposal. Unfortunately,
while we perceptionally think the sport
is growing, the reality is that Indian
golf has not grown in recent years. A
good test is to ask the retailers who
keep a careful look on the numbers.
Good efforts by coaches operating in
empowering ecosystems have seen new
winners emerge, and rightfully so, but
these victories should not distract from
the fact that the sport needs to grow in
India. And that the bigger organisations
have to come together to make the
National Ecosystem more robust and
growth oriented. I remember writing
about this and am reiterating the need
for a group meeting between the IGU,
the PGTI, the PGAI, the WGAI and
the NGAI all debating and fi guring
out harmoniously what they could do
collectively and also individually to
help the sport grow and they could then
offer a common face to the Government
and also request a slice of the National
Sports budget. After all golf is now an
Olympic sport. Idealistic as this may
sound, there is no getting away from
the need to do so and the quicker we
do it, the earlier we may end up with a
common National Golf Development
plan which all the stakeholders will
take full ownership of. When a bunch
of smart Indians get together, they can
create magic. Let’s put this to practice.
It will benefi t all of us.