Changing lives; the PGTI’s long arc for India’s professionals

Kolkata’s Shankar Das, seen here with his Golconda Open trophy from earlier in the season, is the typical aspirational Indian professional. Image courtesy PGTI.

By Rahul Banerji

As the year ticks down, the Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI) is headed for the final two events on its 2024 calendar, nest week’s Vishwa Samudra Open and the season-ending Tata Steel Tour Championship.

The season offered a total prize fund of just under Rs 20 crore, a far cry from when the PGTI first came into existence in 2006. The average purses for most events on the 2024 schedule were Rs 1 crore, and only two were below that threshold.

Between them, the two final events on the calendar will put Rs 5 crore on the table, Rs 2 crore for next week’s tournament at Delhi Golf Club and Rs 3 crore at the Tour Championship in Jamshedpur.

In a sense, this is a good time to look back and assess where the men’s professional game in India sits today.

Till the dying years of the previous century, professional golf in India was played literally for a few thousand rupees. Golfers came from affluent families or the armed forces, but the numbers were always made by the group once termed “caddie-turned-pros”.

It was a time when a handful of golfers kept the professional game alive, most notably Rohtas Singh, who was lost to the game recently.

Trendsetter

Guruji, as he was fondly and widely known was a trendsetter in many ways, including being possibly the first Indian pro to find a sponsor that also allowed him to play tournaments around Asia.

Rohtas was also the first of what were once called caddie-turned-pros to make a proper living from the game even though national honours would never come his way. His rise however was also the catalyst for a number of others to follow.

At around the same time, the likes of Basad Ali and Firoz Ali in Kolkata, Mukesh Kumar in Mhow and 2002 Indian Open champion Vijay Kumar in Lucknow were playing similar inspirational roles for the younger let, many of whom made a living as caddies or course staff.

Mukesh in fact told this writer at the HSBC India Legends Championship in August, “We really have come a long way as professionals When I started out in 1986, even winning tournaments would earn a few thousands.

“Today, we are talking about setting up a senior tour which has also got the backing of the PGTI. The boys today earn in a single tournament what almost used to be the total prize money available for the season.”

In Delhi, Ali Sher was the first to break out and into the big time, winning the Indian Open twice and in the process forcing the establishment to take a second look at the talent that existed in and around the course.

Talent tells

The first Indian to win the national Open since P.G. ‘Billoo’ Sethi, Ali Sher also showed his compatriots that given opportunities, there could be no brooking talent and his success sparked off the aspirations of the next generation, led by Asian Games medallist and two-time Asian Tour winner Rashid Khan.

And then there is the fairytale story of Shiv Shankar Prasad Chawrasia, sone of a greenskeeper at the Royal Calcutta Golf Club who also won the Indian Open twice and has since played on a regular basis on the European and Asian Tours.

In the space of a single generation, the Indian professional tour had grown manifold and when the PGTI was set up in 2006, the tour was still finding its feet.

Its membership, now in the hundreds was minuscule by today’s standards and depended in players from the traditional centres, Delhi and Kolkata, but it is interesting to remember that the very first PGTI Order of Merit winner was the talented young Ashok Kumar from Samastipur in Bihar,

Record earnings

It is another measure of how far the professional game in India has travelled that for the last two years, the rankings winner has earned a direct card on the DP World (European) Tour and on both occasions, the season’s earnings of Manu Gandas and Om Prakash Chouhan have been in excess of a crore of rupees.

Today, even a professional finishing in the middle of the Order of Merit in 60^th place, which is the cutoff for retaining his card for the next season stands to earn anywhere between Rs 10 and 15 lakh, which a single win can catapult him much higher in the rankings.

Kolkata’s Shankar Das for example who won his first title in about four years at the Rs 1 crore Golconda Masters has taken in over Rs 24 lakh with two events to go. Similarly, Bangalore’s M. Dharma, winner of the Rs 1 crore Gurgaon Open has crossed the Rs 31 lakh mark.

And there are so many others – veterans like 2009 Indian Open champion C. Muniyappa, Shamim Khan, Kapil Kumar, Mani Ram, Hyderabad’s Mohammad Azhar not to mention the Baisoya clan of Delhi that has produced winners like Honey and Sachin.

Recalled a former top professional, “The top guy used to earn between Rs 5 and 10  lakh, those in the middle made about a lakh for the season. Even given the drop in the rupee’s purchasing power from 20 and 30 years ago, it is now a different ball game.

And more are doing their utmost to get into it. For many it is a gamble that may not pay off. But for those that make it, a great deal is possible today.

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