Putting Smiles charity event has golfers smiling at Golden Greens

By Rahul Banerji

A heavy turnout marked the Putting Smiles corporate charity golf tournament at the Golden Greens Golf and Resort links near Gurgaon with over a hundred turning out to support the event. 

Putting Smiles joined hands with the K.C. Mahindra Foundation’s Project Nanhi Kali aimed at providing primary education to underprivileged girl children across the country.

Anand Mahindra, current chairman of Mahindra & Mahindra, founded the project with the belief that educated women not only contribute to the economy but also on issues like population, dowry system and child marriage.

Players contributed generously at a post-game auction, proceeds of which will go towards the foundation.

Unusual step

A novel feature was an on the spot panel discussion touching on company and individual charity, corporate social responsibility and related areas that threw up a number of interesting viewpoints and suggestions from the four participants and the moderator.

With the Golden Greens course looking at its best, golfers too had a field day in the winter sun. There is a visible improvement in all aspects at the venue with large swathes of rough cleared enough to at least allow for a swing, and the greens ran absolutely true.

As it is, Golden Greens is one of the more challenging courses in the NCR region with its narrow fairways lined by tough and unyielding vegetation, a generous sprinkling of bunkers and the need to plan your game to get a reasonable score.

By that standard, more than a few walked off after their 18 holes with broad smiles.

Making the most of conditions, our group emerged with a pretty happy card. There were seven birdies and 25-odd pars in the combined 72 holes played, easily the best return I have been part of at an amateur knockabout.

Ram Sharma reeled off four straight birdies and missed a fifth by a whisker, Rashid had three of his own and R. Jaykumar powered the longest drive of the day – a massive 335 yards-plus besides carding a host of pars.

On our round, what caught the eye was overall health of the facility. Golden Greens also hosts an equestrian school and had a basic polo ground that shares space with the driving range.

Significant upgrade

The ground had now been upgraded to a full-fledged tournament venue complete with a pavilion and larger stables. Since I get to play there about once a year, the changes were more than evident since the last visit, and most impressive they were too.

Clearly, there has been significant investment in powering the changes. Later in the evening, there was talk of a major corporate giant, that has so far not had a great deal of interest either in golf or equine sports, showing interest in the place,

So one never knows, there could well be a very familiar logo around the place on the next visit.

Also read: Anirban, Sadhguru attend foundation fund-raiser at Oxford Golf Resort