Golf is a great leveller, bridging the gap between young and old. A Telegraph picture

Pit yourself against Tiger Woods or Ernie Els in a long-driving competition on your computer. Or swing a club and hit perforated golf balls through the bull’s eye. Get started with golf and soon you can tee off at your own workstation or in the campus cafetaria.

Calcutta, which boasts the second oldest golf course in the world and one of the country’s newest IT hubs, is following in the footsteps of Bangalore and Delhi to achieve a perfect biz-birdie connect in the emerging software sector.

A structured initiative, soon to be rolled out by Tiger Sports Marketing (TSM), which drives the Indian golf tour, plans to take the game to Sector V and the new service industries, to help more young professionals in the city break into the sport.

“Using tools and modes they are comfortable with, like golf on the computer, a nylon net or a simulator, we will teach the techies the nuances of the game,” explains Brandon de Souza, the CEO and managing director of TSM.

The company will also take golf to city pubs and malls, hooking a simulator on to a large screen, to hit the “target audience”. Clinics will then take the more adventurous through the rules and the etiquette of the game with a proper demo.

“We have done this in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai where companies like Accenture, Oracle and Dell have lapped it up. We see no reason why a TCS or a Cognizant won’t be enthused,” says De Souza.

The city IT companies, on their part, seem to be warming to the tee-off tunes. “We know golf can be a great stress-buster. It gives you a chance to stop and smell the roses and is also a great test of character,” observes an HR manager in Sector V.

TSM also plans to join hands with blue chips to do golf carnivals for techies where they could play games of skill and games of chance, with golf connotations. Around this, there will be virtual golf, simulators through which they can make a proper swing with proper clubs, driving, hitting or putting.

“It’s a wonderful idea to take golf to the IT sector. The more youngsters we can introduce to the sport, the more we expand the base of the pyramid,” says former national champion “Bunny” Lakhsman Singh.

De Souza agrees if we don’t create public facilities and easier access, it won’t happen. He feels an institution like the Royal Calcutta Golf Club (RCGC) can address this issue by throwing open mid-week memberships at “throwaway prices”.

“We have a clutch of people from IT companies playing golf at our course, and we are open to ideas that could extend the appeal of the game to uncharted territory,” says M.M. Singh, the CEO of RCGC.