By Rahul Banerji
For this week, home is Pondicherry. After a hectic five weeks from launch, teetimetales.com needed a change and here we are, looking forward to a 50-something birthday celebration.
Almost 40 years ago, five young fellas met on the first day of college. And became friends. We’ve stayed that way, through triumph and tragedy, ups and downs and everything in between.
So what does that have to do with golf, you will ask. Not much, except that Kuri’s birthday has his cousin Babu Mathew visiting. And Babu had the good fortune of being witness to Tiger Woods’ 14th and final major. On site.
It came at Torrey Pines in 2008, and young Mathew followed the Tiger for the final day’s round. Woods first caught up with Rocco Mediate, and then beat him in a sudden-death playoff after the regulation 18-hole play-off also ended in a tie.
Babu Mathew, all of 58 then, returned to play the course a day or two later and remembers it like it happened yesterday.
Tiger’s last big one
“Some of those greens that Tiger made in two and three, we toiled to reach in par. And the playoff itself is something no one at Torrey Pines that day will ever forget.”
Okay, that’s it for the golf. Now to food and atmosphere, which is what Pondicherry, or Puducherry, is all about.
Having flown in on an Indigo red-eye from Delhi followed by a three hour drive to Kuri’s beach home in Manjikuppam, I am exhausted, But it’s cool and rainy, a sea change from sultry and polluted Delhi.
Sleep can wait, as excesses beckon.
After a bacon and cheese dominated breakfast – and still no sleep – lunch is at the Villa Helena.
It is one of Pondicherry’s better known eateries and located in the old French quarter. Wine flows, accompanied by an excellent fish carpaccio that comes along with fine, crispy rice noodles.
Alongside, Villa Helena serves up herbed butter and baguettes done just so!
More wine, grilled tiger prawns and juicy steaks follow is quick order and even before al that has sunk in, it is time to look at dinner.
In all of this, I am still in search of some golf on this trim, and young Babu comes to the rescue. He is a member of the Cosmopolitan in Chennai, which is the next stop before heading back to Delhi.
By the time the pork chop dinner has been washed down with copious draughts of Old Monk and coffee liqueur, he has fixed up a round.
“Don’t be too late on the course as the Korean invasion starts after eight,” he warns. “And have fun.”
Cosmo, here I come.
Bhullar chalks up for sixth Top-10
At Incheon, Gaganjeet Bhullar ensured a sixth Top-10 finish in his last eight starts as he finished tied eighth in the $1,000,000 34th Shinhan Donghae Open on Sunday.
Bhullar, who has one win and two second places this season, shot a second successive 3-under 68 to finish at 11-under 273 for the week at the Bear’s Best Cheongna Golf Club.
Rashid Khan (67) finished T-15 for his best result on the Asian Tour this season, though he did have a T2 in the Asian Development Tour event at the Louis Philippe Cup in Bangalore. Khalin Joshi (73) and Shiv Kapur (76) were tied 56th and 62nd.
Korea’sSanghyun Park shot an eight-under-par 63 to complete a wire-to-wire victory. It was the 35-year-old’s second Asian Tour victory after his win in the GS Caltex Maekyung Open.
Read also: Golfing in a volcano’s crater, Handara Bali style
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Pondicherry experience sounds yummy. This is one place I would like to spend some time.