Soured dream

Simply Golf

It's the week of the Hero Honda Masters but the topic for the first couple of days at the Delhi Golf Club has been Daniel Chopra, who is not even here.

Eighteen months ago, when the previous edition of the Hero Honda Masters was staged at the DLF Golf and Country Club, Chopra with his bleached hair had been in contention on the final day.

But he then faltered in the final stages and fell to tied seventh place, three strokes adrift of the winner.

And now when the next edition is in progress, the painful story of how Chopra, the boy who learnt all his golf at this very club, missed the US PGA card has been told and re-told this week.

He came agonisingly close to becoming the first Indian "" his mother is Swedish and father Indian, but he holds a Swedish passport and an Indian heart "" to qualify for the US PGA Tour.

Around two years back, Chopra was within weeks of running out of money and without ideas of how he was going to support his golf travels.

Jeev Milkha Singh bailed him out with a small loan and helped him get a spot in an event in Taiwan.

Chopra performed well in that event and got an entry into the next, which he won. From there the story changed. He went onto the Nationwide Tour in US, which is where he concentrated on this whole season.

The top 20 in Nationwide Tour earn a right to play in the mother of all tours, the US PGA. Flirting in the region of 15th to 20th spots for a good part of the year, he finally finished 21st.

Just one spot out of the dream club. And when you think, he had four bogeys on the back nine and if only two of them had been pars, Daniel Chopra would have been in a club that is the preserve of the best golfers of the world. He has the talent to be there, but this year it wasn't to be.

Just why precisely is this PGA Tour so coveted? Simply because of the amount of prize money that is available on the PGA Tour.

Last week the US PGA announced the schedule for the 2004 season and it featured 48 events in 52 weeks with a total prize money of about $245 million. Some of the weeks have more than one event scheduled in the period.

To give you an idea of how lucrative the Tour is, the 125th placed player, who manages to keep his playing rights for the following season makes in the region of just under $500,000. And of course toppers like Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh can cross $7 million in prize money.

In case one thought it was only the "big" names who get all the cream, there were 18 first-time winners in 2003 and golfers above 40 years of age won more than a dozen events during the season. The most prominent, of course, being Vijay Singh.

Now, you know why or how disappointed Daniel Chopra would be at coming so close and missing what is the ultimate dream for any pro golfer.