Delhi Golf Club unveils its new-look 18-hole Lodhi Course

By Rahul Banerji

On Friday, the Delhi Golf Club (DGC) will formally reopen its signature 18-hole Lodhi Course, which was shut down for renovation and a thorough revamp about a year ago.

The historic course, which has bred a long line of former and current champions, came in for severe criticism over the state of its greens last year, particularly during the Panasonic Open India tournament, and decided to do the full Monty in presenting a fresh face to the world.

“Rather do the job in bits and pieces, the club committee sat down and took the hard decision to completely recast the greens,” said DGC president Maj R.S. Bedi, VrC (retd) on Tuesday. “It is to the credit of the members that they agreed to the move and put up with the 12-month disruption to their game.

“But it has been worth the wait, and all the effort that has gone into the work. I think we can now saw the DGC in this form will run for the next 15 to 20 years at least, given the systems that have been put in place.

Fully sponsored

“Importantly, the club corpus is untouched. We approached sponsors to put up the funds and offered nothing in return and they were all kind enough to come forward. People like Siddharth Sriram, Hero MotoCorp and Hero Cycles, who have a long history with the Delhi Golf Club all chipped in for the whole thing,” Maj Bedi said.

“Sriram in fact paid the full fees of Gary Player Design, who executed the project and we have to thank the DCM Group, Hero, DLF, Jindal Steel, SRF, Sudhir Power and all the others. One hole was full paid for anonymously by club members and it will carry that name from now on,” he added.

Delhi Golf Club captain Rohit Sabherwal, who oversaw the massive job along with chief executive Anil Rattan, said the redesign also allowed them to lay a completely new irrigation system for the fairways besides doing up the greens. “In end-December last year, we held detailed discussions on how to go about it.

”There were a more than a few issues and the logistics were very large. In all, we shifted some 230,000 cubic feet of sand, but we decided to do the whole thing in one go for the sake of consistency/

Tough task

“We had a mandate to not only bring the course back to international standards but also do it in a way that did not tamper with the heritage aspect to create a course to challenge every level of golfer. It was pure and simple teamwork all the way,” Sabherwal added.

Every green now has much more undulations and a number of bunkers have either been put in, or taken away to provide especially the top notch players more options, and play with more care.

Senior professional Gaurav Ghei, a DGC product and a long-time member himself, said the redesign would make professionals change the way they played the course.

“Earlier, it was a matter of hitting it straight from the tees and then chip and run on to the greens. That is no longer possible and players will need to think their way through a round.

“Placement will become extremely important now.”

Fellow-pro Manav Jaini agreed. “We will need to plan a great deal more than earlier. It was a question of getting to the green and getting the putts in, Players who hit straight had every chance to get birdies pretty much all the time. It will be a lot more difficult now.”

For Maj. Bedi and Sabherwal, it has been a labour of love, with all the attendant difficulties, twists and turns. But both are unanimous in underlining that the nine-month project – in itself a remarkable fact – has been worth all the sweat and tears.

And the DGC has been kind enough to invite teetimetales to get a closer feel of the work done, rather than just a drive-through. So, at some point in the near future, we will carry a course review on the done up, more testing Lodhi Course of the Delhi Golf Club.

Also read: 33rd Usha Golf JTP second camp winners announced