Golf in the Nilgiris-1: The Ootacamaund (Ooty) Gymkhana Club

By Rahul Banerji

Those fortunate to have visited the Blue Mountains will remember names like Ooty, Coonoor, Burliar, Kotagiri, Pykara and so many others redolent of idyllic times.

For four blissful years as a teenager, the Blue Mountains or Nilgiris, as they are better known, were a retreat, initially from boarding school in Delhi, and thereafter at the Lawrence School in Lovedale.

Life then took its own course, college in Madras (now Chennai), work and marriage in Assam and a return to Delhi with a major national newspaper. Forty-odd years blurred past in the course of which a lasting affection for golf was born.’

Over the past few years, it has become something of a mission to tick off visits to as many golf courses around the country as possible, though a round on the rolling downs of Ooty or across the slopes and streams of Wellington remained elusive.

So it was with some delight when an opportunity came by recently to revisit the hills of one’s boyhood, it was eagerly grabbed.

The course at Ooty (Udhagamandalam) is situated at some 7,000 feet, one of the highest golf destinations in the country and after Shillong in faraway Meghalaya, amongst the best natural layouts one has had the privilege of playing on.’

Stiff test

As the club’s website says, “With the Avalanchi range in the surrounding and heavily wooded tree-line that consists of eucalyptus, oak, rhododendron and fir, Ooty Golf is a very challenging course to play in the midst of thick woods.”

And that’s putting it mildly, the “challenging” bit. For one, you play the first nine holes blind. Between swooping slopes and dog-legs, every tee shot leaves with a hope and a prayer.

Caddie-dictated lines are a must-follow, particularly for visiting golfers.

Then for a plainsman, there is the little matter of negotiating those plunging slopes designed to set muscle and lung on fire.

And finally, there is the bramble and rhododendron. Long spiky leaves on shrubs that grow thickly along the fairways, waiting to swallow errant golf balls.

The course is not a very long one, some 6,208 yards from the tips. But it is certainly a test of accuracy and stamina. The Halfway Hut comes as a huge relief tor toiling golfers.

A word of caution. Make sure you leave your order for refreshments at the clubhouse before setting out, else you make have to make the turn on an empty stomach

The good thing is that the ball flies a heck of a lot further than it does on the plains so one tends to walk away with a slightly exaggerated sense of ability.

But there certainly is a sense of achievement in belting a seven-iron over a hundred and eight-five yards. And never mind the score.

The club also boasts of exotica not normally associated with golf courses.

For one, the Gymkhana is where the rules of snooker were codified by a Lt Col Neville Francis Fitzgerald Chamberlain in 1884 after he first created and played the game in Jabalpur some years earlier.

Hoary past

Then, and even more singularly, the golf course occasionally becomes part of the Ooty Hunt, a 186-year old institution that is very hard to explain .

Suffice to say, in 1835, the 74th Highland Regiment established the Hunt initially to ride down deer, wild boar and occasionally, a tiger.

Today, the Hunt Club is the only one of its kind outside the United Kingdom, complete with a Master of Fox Hounds, whippers-in, riders clad in scarlet coats and white breeches et al. Plenty of rules too to go with all the ceremony and customs.

Some of my happiest teenage days were spent on the Ooty Downs, waiting for the MFH and the Field to edge away from our group and then letting the horses go in a flat-out gallop across the craftily created gap.

I’m pretty sure the younger riders at the Hunt do the same these days too. Heady stuff.

So during the Hunt season, don’t be surprised when on the back-nine, you need to make way for a pack of horses thundering past looking like they and the riders had fallen out of a film set.

Issues aplenty

Just a couple of more observations about the golf course and the club.

One, the Ooty Gym does not get a lot of outstation players using the course, at least in the off season. My caddie for the day, who has been on the bag for 40 years and ore bemoaned the lack of patronage, made worse by the Covid lockdown.

This has inevitably affected the quality of the course itself with the fairways mostly left alone and only the greens tended to on a regular basis.

Consequently, there is little to differentiate the course from the rough. There s plenty of animal damage too, particularly from wild boar and cattle.

Second, given the scant number of golfers making use of the facility, may be the club could consider relaxing its rules just a mite. Ooty is after all a tourist town, and the establishment stands to benefit from encouraging the casual golfer, not dissuading her.

Also read: Bangalore Buzz: Golf globe-trotter makes a halt in Garden City