Golf in the Nilgiris-2: The Wellington Gymkhana Club

By Rahul Banerji

For years, we knew it only as The Gym. Formally though, it was and remains the Wellington Gymkhana Club.

The picturesque and quite delightfully-situated Wellington Gymkhana was the site of many youthful good times and holds a very special place in one’s memory.

Four of the best years of a largely nomadic life were spent in a happy blur at Wellington. Fathers worked, mothers balanced budgets and fed every-hungry offspring, but for kids, it was heaven.

Outdoors activities were plentiful as they tend to be at forces establishments, but the Defence Services Staff College probably has the best of the lot – and all in one place.

From horse-riding competitions to cricket, tennis, snooker and billiards to the Hunt Ball – and just the once, golf – the Gym was the centre-piece of life in the four years spent at Staff College, as the DSSC is better known.

The Gymkhana Club sits in a little valley between the cantonment town of Wellington, also home to the Madras Regimental Centre, and the town of Coonoor.

The road connecting the two sweeps through part of the golf course and used to be a favoured site for filmmakers till it all got fenced up for safety’s sake and thanks to the ever-growing traffic.

Natural layout

In fact, my first, and only encounter with golf before taking it up many years later came at the Gym’s course, a spectacular layout that is as much a visual delight as it is a demanding slog.

The course was a rudimentary affair back in the Seventies, and a small corrugated iron structure served as the golf hut. That has now changed.

Using my friend Sanjeev’s “borrowed” set from his father, we had a whale of a time hitting balls into the streams and bogs that punctuate the course. Inevitably, his father discovered what we had been up to.

Sanjeev, now retired from the Army himself, never really told me what transpired between himself and his father, now a hale and hearty 90-plus living in Dehradun, but it must have been quite drastic.

Neither of us ever picked up a club again while in Wellington.

There were too many other things to do for fancy-free boys, too many distractions as well. Girls, parties, riding, the Hunt, and pinching unauthorized booze at the bar.

Old Thamba was the presiding deity at the Gymkhana bar and fortunately had a soft spot for thirsty teenagers, slipping us the odd drink once in a while, but holding nothing back at the annual social gala, the Hunt Ball.

Rolling back the years

Forty-odd years later, I was back. Thamba is long gone, the humble golf hut has grown into a swank clubhouse all on its own, and the course has more people on it than I had ever seen all those years back.

The Gymkhana clubhouse fronts a massive rectangular field that is part golf course, part cricket ground, the venue of the annual Mounted Gymkhana, and occasionally a helicopter landing area.

Three holes of the front nine and two on the way back are played across this sole flat part of the course, For the rest of the time, you are either climbing or descending, thigh muscles and lungs on fire.

From 1978 to 1981, we lived perched above the par-3 fifth hole, a 140-yard uphill hit onto a plateau green. As youngsters, one largely ignored those toiling up the slope, caddy on tow. Or smiled snarkily.

This time I learnt just what it takes out of the system.

And as I gasped and whooped my way around the layout, including parts of the club’s grounds never seen before, it was in its own way, a tribute to that distant morning on this golf course, forty years ago,

It was after all, where the golf bug first bit.

For those intending to play the Wellington Gymkhana course, walk-ins are allowed and rates are reasonable. A little time inspecting the hire sets is advisable though, just to make sure you aren’t caught wanting, halfway up a hillside.

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