alt="Jeev Milkha Singh"/>
Indian golfer Jeev Milkha Singh
Long before he became India’s greatest golfer,
href="http://jeevmilkhasingh.net/">Jeev
Milkha Singh had another claim to fame. His father, Jeev Milkha, was
known around the country as the “the Flying Sikh,” an
Indian sporting hero who came within a whisker of a bronze medal in the 400
meter dash at the 1964 Olympic Games in Rome.
As a boy growing up in the 1970s, the younger Singh excelled
at cricket and field hockey. But his focus shifted at age nine, when his father
returned from a trip to England with a set of golf clubs. “I was
intrigued,” Singh says. “I remember following my dad down
to the local golf club and watching three or four youngsters play. I took one
swing, and I was hooked.”
At the time, golf was a rarified indulgence in India, with
only half a dozen courses in the country. But as Singh’s game grew,
so did golf.
Some 30 years later, Singh is a fixture on the PGA and
European Tours, and India is the second-fastest-growing golf market in the
world, after China. Where once there were six courses, there are now more than
200, with an additional 50-plus projects in the works. Singh’s home
course, the Chandigarh Golf Club, had 200 members when Singh
was a child. It now has 2,000, and a lengthy waiting list to join. “It’s
like night and day,” Singh says of the changes.
India’s economic rise, along with the emergence of
stars like Singh, has introduced the golf bug to the broader population. Unlike
golf in the United States, which tilts toward the Viagra demographic, the
market in India draws on young families with children, part of the country’s
swelling middle class.
Some 500,000 people now play golf in India, and the game is
growing at an estimated 25 percent a year. The country has its own pro tour
(the Professional Golf Tour of India), and plays host to such tournaments as
the $2 million Avantha Masters, which this year became a stop on the European
Tour.
Golf, Singh says, will likely never outpace cricket, India's
most popular sport. “But,” he says, “golf is a
good fit for India. The country is a growing presence around the world, and
golf is very much a global sport.”
Etiquette on the Course
An export of the British Empire, golf first took root in
India as a tweedy pastime, a leisure pursuit for stiff-lipped expats and crusty
members of the upper castes. Bloodlines were important; business relations less
so. Rounds were made for genteel socializing, not inking deals.
That, too, has begun to change.
The new India is home to a new breed of golfer, with a
fondness for networking, American-style. Salesmen schmooze. Marketers market.
Today, it’s not uncommon to find Indian fairways clogged with
corporate outings, sponsored by major international firms.
Few facilities in India would ever be confused with fancy
Western country clubs, or the outsize extravagances found in other nascent golf
markets like China and Korea. Clubhouses tend toward the modest, and rounds are
often played to the rhythm of an urban soundtrack, as the noise of car horns
and the strains of lively music filter across the fairways from surrounding
neighborhoods.
Cells phones? Sure
With the exception of
href="http://www.delhitourism.nic.in/publicpage/golf.aspx">Army Golf Course, a humble
public track in Delhi, all of India’s golf clubs are private, and
adhere to familiar private club codes. Collared shirts are required. Denim is
prohibited. Cursing and club throwing are frowned upon. Cell phones, though,
are another story. Widely disdained, if not outlawed, at most U.S. courses,
they’re ubiquitous in India, and caddies (they, not golf carts, are
the norm in India) often double as personal secretaries, dispatching text
messages or fielding calls for players who are otherwise occupied with their
rounds.
Given all they do—chasing balls into the rough,
even diving into murky water hazards to retrieve shots—caddies
receive relatively little in return: the average tip for 18 holes hovers
between $3 and $5. Certainly not an item your expense department's going to question.
