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Vol. XXVI No. 03, May 16-31, 2016

Golf on a Sunday

by V. Kalidas

Morning walkers in the Boat Club area often tend to gravitate into small groups which become a constant factor and morph into a kind of a mobile club. After the morning constitutionals, they assemble at a fixed rendezvous, which is a street corner and, before dispersing for the day, discuss the affairs of the world ranging from politics and sports to global finance and medicine.

Thus on this level playing field, though drawn from different walks of life, industrialist and entrepreneur, chairman and architect, income-tax commissioner and journalist, aging actor and IT professional strike up a fellowship and even, occasionally, socialise with their families in tow but take care to restrict such get-togethers to a ‘stag’ session whenever it is at a bar! Short jaunts to Pondicherry or Mahabalipuram come in handy when there is a long week-end.

One recent Sunday morning the conversation veered from humorous asides on Zomba Dance and Yoga to Tai Ichi for senior citizens and ultimately arrived at the Tamil Nadu Government’s laudable prog­ramme launching a new scheme for growing more trees in a phased manner.

That led to a senior member of our group, a Golf addict, swinging into a ‘greening’ mood. He offered to take us to the TNGF Cosmo Golf Club in Nandanam for a communion with Nature and its green fields topped by a sumptuous breakfast at the clubhouse restaurant! The offer was too tempting to be passed up. And so it came to pass that nine of us piled into three vehicles and drove off from the Boat Club area to the Golf links in the Nandanam area adjacent to the YMCA grounds.

The transition from the concrete chaos of Anna Salai to the serene surroundings that gradually unfolded as the road snaked its sinuous way from the YMCA fringe to the golfcourse was ­virtually an exhilarating metamorphosis from concrete to G O L F !

The very mention of Golf conjures up visions of sprawling greens, verdant expanses, canopies provided by trees hugging each other, swaying to the orchestration of birds, and long walks across undulating grassy lands, rough patches and sheets of water – all laid out in a planned manner – far away from the maddening city crowds!

Our reverie in the car turned into reality as we stepped into the golf course which had its beginnings in the early ’90s. Its hoary tradition can be traced to the fact that it was inaugurated on January 13, 1938, by the then Governor General of India, Victor Alexander Hope.

Sprawled over 90 acres, the 18-hole golf course in Nandanam is a golfer’s delight. Bunkers, sheets of water (never mind their quality), mounds, sand patches and deliberately varied levels of manicured grass on the fairways pose challenges to the golfing fanatic. Sometimes a golfer will have to hit the ball over the sheets of water or over tree tops to complete his round. His challenge is to cover the course – putting the ball into the 10 holes in the least number of strokes to emerge the winner! Stress is the bête noire in an otherwise serene environment for which Golf is well known. Handicaps and other related matters go into the mechanism of a tournament. What happens to the balls lost in the waterways? They are later picked up by the local lads, given a fresh sheen and sold afresh as new ones!

It is a wondrous sight to see well-turned out men with caps moving around with their clutch of golf clubs (metallic, wooden etc) in buggies on the neatly laid out buggy-paths after playing the first stroke from the Tee Box.

We moved into the club house, called the ‘India Cements Hut’ (the Big Boss of this corporate happens to be the President of the Club) for a break. At first we were taken aback by a poster pasted on the wall stating that a 15-minute break was permissible for Players in between games.

Comforted by the knowledge that this “time-out” rule did not apply to us, we gorged ourselves leisurely on a sumptuous breakfast of pongal and piping hot vadais washed down with large glasses of fresh lime, papaya and watermelon juices. The Japanese and the Koreans seemed to love not only their golf but also masala dosai and vadai-s, handling the snacks with the some expertise required to negotiate slippery noodles, sushi and dimsums!

After browsing around the fairways which seemed to stretch into the distant horizon, we realised that our Golf friend’s “lean and mean” look could be attributed to his golfing activities on Fridays! Indeed, deceptively tucked behind the languid, lazy movement of the game is a nagging determination to walk miles and miles lugging the kit.

But Golf also affords players the opportunity to relax and network with clients and friends, apart from quaffing a glass of beer to regain the calories burnt earlier!

And, at the end of the day, the communion with Nature is a priceless boon.

No wonder a former Golf champion once remarked with pride: “No other game combines the wonder of nature with the discipline of sport in such carefully planned ways. A great golf course both frees and challenges a golfer’s mind.”

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