Arjun Atwal

Want to chip and putt like SSP or swing and sink like AA, but don’t know where to start? The Calcutta Ladies Golf Club, on the Maidan, beckons with a pay-and-play programme for youngsters. The monthly fee? Rs 500.

Less than a month after Shiv Shankar Prasad Chowrasia’s fairytale triumph in the Indian Masters, and coinciding with Arjun Atwal’s Malaysian Open triumph, a novel public golfing facility has teed-off in town.

Launched by Protouch Golf Academy, in alliance with the Calcutta Ladies Golf Club, the walk-in-walk-out scheme for women and under-18 youngsters is aimed at broadening the base of the golf pyramid.

“The idea is to offer a stepping stone for anyone who wants to pick up the fundamentals of golf. To begin with, we are providing two coaches and all gear, with classes every Friday evening between 3.30 and 5.30,” says Indrajit Bhalotia, the chief coach and director of Protouch.

“This is a very positive step, tailor-made to tap talent waiting to be unearthed, particularly in the wake of SSP’s amazing feat at the Indian Masters and Arjun Atwal’s Malaysian Open triumph,” feels Ashit Luthra, vice-president of the IGU (Indian Golf Union) that picks youngsters for the advanced junior programme at the Royal Calcutta Golf Club (RCGC).

The past captain of RCGC remembers “a Mr Duckworth”, an expatriate, who used to impart golf lessons for free “to any willing kid on the Maidan” in the late Sixties. “However, this is the first concerted public facility since then, and should come as a huge boost to the game, since anyone can play.”

S.S.P. Chowrasia

With interest in golf growing with every Indian — and Calcuttan — victory on the global golfing map, the timing of the pay-and-play programme cannot be faulted.

Former Asiad gold medallist and home-grown great ‘Bunny’ Lakshman Singh agrees golf coming to the Maidan club is “a wonderful idea”. He is confident the Protouch-Calcutta Ladies Golf Club programme is the first step towards creating a critical mass of golf-playing youngsters in the city.

“Today, membership to a golf club is a prized commodity. Some of these youngsters from the present programme could turn out to be able golfers and also secure a much sought-after club membership as a bonus. Or, they could get absorbed in the Royal/IGU advance clinic,” says Singh.

Protouch feels that by taking the game to greater numbers, it can soon scale up the number of trainees on the Maidan.

“Today, all the talent is from either the affluent or from the lowest end of the socio-economic spectrum, in the form of caddies. We want to tap into the mid-segment, which would throw up numbers,” says Bhalotia.