Golf set to be the next big thing in India

NEW DELHI – ON most weekends, New Delhi tycoon Ashwani Khurana steers his Mercedes-Benz limousine to a 109ha property he owns in Manesar, some 35km out west on the highway to Jaipur.

Around the sprawling property, called Unitech Karma Lakelands, he is building 225 villas, a clubhouse and a resort hotel set amid lush greenery dotted with water bodies full of fish.

At an average price of 70 million rupees (S$2.65 million) for a little over 6,000 sq ft, the villas are not cheap, because real estate prices are booming as Japanese and German firms set up manufacturing units in the area.

Mr Khurana, however, believes he has an ace up his sleeve: a nine-hole international-size golf course he has built in the middle of the estate.

‘Selling the villas will not be an issue,’ he said confidently. ‘Both real estate and golf are hot, so to speak. Besides, my project will appeal to all who have an eco-friendly orientation.’

India has always been known as a cricket-mad nation, but the next big sport in the country could well be golf.

By some estimates, 400,000 Indians play the game. Retired Wing Commander Satish Aparajit, who heads the Indian Golf Union, said the union is adding life memberships by the hundreds every month, with the total recently passing 7,000.

The national broadcaster Doordarshan now offers a 6am feature, called View Of Golf, and ESPN and Ten Sports have an avid following when golf is on.

Advertisers are taking notice. One TV ad features the popular Kapil Dev, a former India cricket captain, and shows him alighting from a helicopter onto a golf green, then addressing the audience after holing his putt.

Mr Dev is a single-handicapper, as is Ajay Jadeja, another national cricketer now retired.

While the army and civil services have produced some nifty players, Indian golfing professionals are also gaining increasing attention worldwide.

Last month, on the opening day of a wind-blown Augusta Masters, India’s Jeev Milkha Singh finished even par, one better than World No. 1 Tiger Woods and four better than Phil Mickelson.

Jeev, son of the legendary Olympic sprinter Milkha Singh, is the hottest Indian prospect currently, showing up in tournaments around the world.

In the 2006 season, he played 39 tournaments in 17 countries and won four, including the prestigious Volvo Masters on the European tour.

Others, such as Jyoti Randhawa, Arjun Atwal and Gaurav Ghei, have been making their mark as well.

It has helped too that Fijian golfer Vijay Singh, who briefly held the No. 1 spot while Woods was retooling his swing, has Indian roots. So does Daniel Chopra, a Swede.

‘It is a matter of time before we create world beaters in the game,’ said Mr Brandon de Souza, who runs Tiger Sports Marketing, a company that specialises in sponsoring golf tournaments.

‘Indians are not very good at contact sports, but mentally, they are very strong,’ he added.

Four years ago, when Burmese-American Albert Mya-San arrived in Bangalore to run a software company, he knew of fewer than 10 people at the Karnataka Golf Association course who played to a handicap of five or lower. ‘When I left recently to move to Delhi there were at least 30 people that had a zero to five handicap. The younger generation of Indians has really picked up golf,’ he said.

More importantly, money is flowing into the game. Sponsorships are rising as the corporate set moves into the sport.

Hero Honda, India’s biggest maker of motorcycles, backs the Indian Open, after starting as a hole-in-one sponsor several years ago. The prize money was 30 million rupees at the most recent Open.

Foreign companies like HSBC, Maersk and Nokia have also discovered that the sport can be a serious marketing tool in India.

Last year, the 50 big events Tiger Sports handled included making arrangements for several companies that flew in high-value clients and contacts for the British Open.

One reason talent is set to sprout is that new golf courses are springing up around the country.

India has always had some of the oldest golf courses outside Britain, but they were mostly set in military cantonments or seats of colonial administration. The Royal Calcutta Golf Club, the oldest of them, was established in 1829.

Mr de Souza says a lot of his business also comes from real estate developers such as Mr Khurana who seek to lift the value of their property by adding golfing facilities as an attraction.

The reason is simple: India’s clubby elite of top bureaucrats and senior armed forces officers have cornered most memberships for themselves. The newly rich, whose parents were neither senior civil servants nor military brass, simply have no access to membership, regardless of the money they are willing to put down.

Today, the biggest factor holding back a golfing explosion is a lack of public courses and driving ranges. There is just one public course in all of India.

Fully half of India’s estimated 220 courses are owned and managed by the armed forces. For that reason, getting in can be a problem for civilians. Besides, the quality of a golf course is often dependent on a unit commanding officer’s attitude to the game.

Many Delhi-wallahs, for instance, count themselves fortunate that General J.J. Singh, the current army chief, is an avid golfer.

All that will change with the advent of private golf courses. For instance, all the new courses in the booming suburb of Gurgaon and its neighbourhood, including Mr Khurana’s Karma Lakelands, are in private hands.

‘The explosion hasn’t yet happened. It will come in the next five to 10 years,’ said Mr V. Krishnaswamy, India’s most prolific writer on golf and an adviser to the Asian Tour. ‘The haves want to play golf, and their numbers are growing.’

Source:
Paper: Straits Times, The (Singapore)
Date: May 23, 2007