The scene is the 18th green at the Army Golf Club at Dhaula Kuan in New Delhi. The occasion is the PGA of India championship sponsored by Honda and Usha. It’s the sixth playoff hole with David Carter of England and local favorite Arjun Atwal battling it out for the title. Carter wins, Atwal loses.
Cut to the Bell South Classic in Atlanta, Georgia, which always precedes the Masters Tournament. It’s a five-way playoff for the title with Phil Mickelson and Arjun Atwal in contention. Mickelson wins, Atwal loses.
Cut to the 18th green at the Sedgefield Country Club, Greensboro, North Carolina. It’s the final day at the Wyndham Championship. Arjun Atwal has to hole a testing, slightly bending seven-footer (after a recovery chip following an indifferent second shot, which rolls well over the green) to be saved from yet another playoff, this time with David Toms, an erstwhile major winner. Atwal sinks it, and wins.
This is no ordinary win. For an American or European or even a Japanese, it is the heat of intense competition that burnishes their skill from virtually their first outing. Not so for the Indians. Relatively speaking, the competition at home is bland. It gets mildly spicy in Asia, somewhat tangy and exciting in Europe, but the great feast — the most competitive — and rich arena in the world are the 43 or so championships that are staged annually by the US PGA. A victory here immortalises one, allows free passage into the US PGA tour, provides automatic entry into the Masters Championship, the finest of the majors, and opens the treasure trove of sponsorships, exemptions, prize money, et al.
It’s been a Pilgrim’s Progress for Atwal. To get so near the Holy Grail and be denied time and again is depressing. But then, instead of slipping into the Slough of Despond, as some may have done at having lost their tour card and with the future looking like a distinctly dreadful grind over many months, to ‘free wheel’ it and pull off a spectacular win against some of the best players in the world, speaks volumes of his grit, character, determination, commitment and courage.
Indian hopefuls must realise that, no matter how good they are, they can hone their talent only against the best competitive fields. This means that one must sacrifice home with all its delights and comforts to be away for years. Most Indians cannot afford it and need sponsors. Regrettably, these are few and far between. Sponsors will spend millions on that couch potato game called cricket, but nothing much on golf (which is the second-fastest growing game in India, after cricket).
Even though Atwal may not think about it, this win of his is bigger than he himself. It opens up the pipeline for hopefuls through which great players like Daniel Chopra, Jeev Milkha Singh, Shiv Kapur and many others have already travelled. There is light at the end of the tunnel if one can rough it out and demonstrate character in keeping on moving ever forward and upward, learning how to lose and lose and win, and lose again, and still rise.
The way most newspapers have splashed this victory on the front pages, allotting scarce saleable space to it, augurs well for future coverage of events. The greater visibility will surely encourage more people to take up the game. With that will come more golf courses, academies, coaches, employment, improved tourism attractions and, of course, new victors.
The icing on the cake will be if the states and municipalities shed their socialistic antipathy to a sport ostensibly only for the rich, and lease out land to entrepreneurs to set up golf courses in small towns. Atwal cut his golfing teeth in Kolkata, the heartland of communism in India. When one sees how many local champions have come from economically weaker ranks, it augurs well for encouraging golf development, as this sport can be played competitively even into one’s dotage (because of a handicapping system that is supposed (?) to equalise skill levels).
For Atwal, this means stress-free entry in the next two years into the US PGA tour and into the Masters for 2011. All he needs is one victory each year to keep going strong. Vijay Singh migrated to the US only in his late thirties and has never looked back. Atwal is there now at the same age and let us all hope that he does a repeat. Nicklaus, Kenny Perry, Vijay Singh, Tom Watson have shown that one can compete effectively even in the forties, and then of course there is the Seniors tour. The world is wide open for Atwal to feast on the greatest tournaments in the world, in the greatest game in the world.
The abiding pictures of his victory will always be the acute concentration at executing that testing seven-footer, the outstretched arms in sudden and surprised realisation that he had actually won against terrific odds, and the loving caress of the trophy as though it was his newborn child.
(Siddharth Shriram is the Chairman of Honda Siel Cars India Ltd and Usha International. He covers the Master's Championship for Business Standard each year and expects to do so again in April 2011 when Arjun Atwal will be competing)
