When you grow up as an army officer’s son, sports are an inherent part of life. I stuck to individual sports: golf, swimming, equestrian, racquet sports, even croquet on mess lawns on Sundays. Cantonments had sports facilities that weren’t world-class, but were always accessible. We took them for granted. My father came home for lunch and left for games with fellow officers and soldiers in the afternoons. Sports were an integral part of life.
You fell from a horse and broke a bone. Were you scared to mount a horse again? Petrified. But not getting back on wasn’t an option. Eventually, you learnt how to fall, and not hurt yourself. For someone with vertigo, the pool looked like a postage stamp from a 10-metre diving board. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t jump. You still can’t. But you learnt how to go head first and dive. Makes no sense I know, but it worked. The vertigo is still there, but you’re used to the fear. You know how to navigate it.
I love the clarity that retrospect brings. I can see how sports were a rite of passage for us… into man (adult?) hood. You learnt not to be paralysed by fear. Even more importantly, you learnt how to deal with failure. Neither my brother nor I joined the forces, but sports are very much an inherent part of life. They keep us centred. Like the clay.
Golf — as it is with most who take up the game — became a bit of an obsession. For a moment there, you thought you could play it for a living. But the things you love, and those you’re good at aren’t always the same… you’re glad you let that dream go. As you watch professional golfers toil for hours at the range you realise that the game changes in character when it becomes a means of earning your livelihood. And elegant golf swings don’t transition well from the amateur to the professional arena.
Look at any successful professional’s golf swing and compare it with his action when he or she was an amateur. In most cases, elegance, length and grace go out the window when players turn pro, and are replaced by shorter, robust and more repeatable golf swings that hold up better under pressure. Sour grapes? Possibly. But at least the game continues to be a choice; an integral part of your life: you travel for it, you write about it, you watch it, read about it, and the quest to get better continues unabated. It’s a futile one, but you keep at it.
Have you got any better? Sadly, no, if anything, you’re worse than you were when you weren’t trying to dissect the workings of the golf swing. The more you think about it, the more you’re convinced that the golf swing is one beautiful whole, and any attempts to break it down destroy its melody. Its tempo. You’ve got to be of a very scientific bent to appreciate the innards of a dissected frog.
The swing is something like that: most good players know the intricacies, but the truly great ones? They’re just trying to make the golf ball do something ‘out there.’ Just look at Scottie Scheffler, the American professional golfer.
Earlier this month, at an event organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), I was part of a group of people invited to speak about how we can ‘grow the game’ and make it more attractive to the younger generation in India as it were.
The discussion, the actors involved, and the central themes were all too familiar. More infrastructure, more courses, accessibility, structured programmes for juniors, nurturing talent, planning for the Olympics and so forth. Back in 2012, I thought the time was ripe to pitch a golf show and shot a pilot episode. One of the stories I included was with seven-year-old Shubham Jaglan — a young boy from Panipat from a family of wrestlers — who had learnt the game largely from YouTube.
Honing his skills through the Junior Training Programme at the Delhi Golf Club, supported by benefactors who saw his talent and enabled by his dad who basically made it his life goal to see his son realise his dream, Jaglan did very well as a junior. Today he’s a top amateur, still setting records on the US collegiate circuit, and on track to become a golf professional.
Jaglan’s family had neither the means, nor connections with the sport but managed to find a way because they had a sporting tradition. It’s a testament to how a sporting culture, in a family, and in a community, can create conditions in which talent can be nurtured against all odds. Things have come a long way since 2012, but it still takes an incredible amount of self-belief and committed support from sponsors and family for individuals like Jaglan to make a go of it in golf.
On a closing note, when I thought about our panel discussion later, I realised we’d missed a critical point. By focusing on the big picture — one that transcends the individual — we had ignored the most compelling reason that golf needs to be more accessible to young people. The game’s unique ability to become a visceral life pursuit; its capacity to still the mind and overpower all other afflictions, worries, and thoughts.
To play golf is to leave everything else behind. And that’s a really powerful thing. Everyone ought to have the chance to experience that. If you ask me, that’s the biggest reason that everyone should have the chance to experience that magic.
Meraj Shah is a seasoned golf writer and video producer