From New Delhi to Busan: End of a twenty-year-long golden sabbatical

The golfing fraternity is still celebrating Shiv Kapur’s gold medal at the Asian Games yesterday. They will continue to cherish these m...

The golfing fraternity is still celebrating Shiv Kapur’s gold medal at the Asian Games yesterday. They will continue to cherish these memories years later and applaud the recognition he has gained for the community after a gap of 20 years. India last won the golf gold in 1982, when the Asian Games were held in Delhi and played over the Delhi Golf Course. The four-member team of Rishi Narain, Lakshman Singh, Rajiv Mohta and Amit Luthra were almost unknowns when they teed it up, but heroes four days later, recalls Rishi.

‘‘When we started the tournament nobody ever expected us to even finish in the top five. One of the teams that teed it up had just come off a second place finish in the Eisenhower Cup. The Philippine team had Frankie Minoza and Korea, Taiwan and Thailand were considered the top five teams,’’ says Rishi, reflecting back.

	Exposure abroad helped: Shiv
NEW DELHI: The US-based Asian Games gold medal winner Shiv Kapur said that the exposure he got abroad helped him adjust to the difficult conditions in Busan. The new star of Indian golf, who returned late on Monday night here, said ‘‘the experience of playing in different weather conditions in the US helped ovecome the rainy weather at the Asaid Country Club during the crunch hour.’’ But the gold medallist — who was received at the airport by a motley crowd of family, friends and members of the Indian Golf Union — insisted that ‘‘it was not necessary to train abroad to succeed at top level.’’ Shiv added that the standard of the game was quite high in India and there was no reason why an Indian golfer cannot win abroad. When asked about his cakewalk in the qualifiers, Shiv modestly said, ‘‘It was one those days when everything went right for me while the rest had an off day.’’ And the bonhime among the Indian team could be seen to be believed. Shiv’s teammates, who had arrived at a couple of hours before him, waited for the star to join the celebrations. Story continues below this ad

However, it all turned out quite differently. They not only finished in first, second and fourth place in the individuals but blew the competition away by a shocking 16 strokes. Rishi says: ‘‘We should have made a clean sweep of the medals, but I bogeyed the last hole coming in. Sakata, a top amateur on the Japanese team holed an eight footer on the 18th hole to beat me. The locker room used to be here and I was sitting inside and looking out of the window. I had been informed that if he missed that putt we would have gone into a playoff for third place.’’

The final tally in ’82 was a gold for Lakshman Singh, silver for Rajiv Mohta while Rishi Narain got the fourth place. Lakshman Singh got on a hot streak after the gold, according to Rishi, winning the All India in Mumbai and then the Eastern India in Kolkotta. There were a few incidents that Narain, who heads the golf division at IMG, recalls. ‘‘In the third round, Lakshman hit the bushes on the 13th hole, chipped out and holed a three-iron for birdie. It was as if it was meant to be.’’

Back in his match, a similar incident occurred. Rishi hit the bushes on the fourth hole and keeping in mind the five minutes that are allowed to look for the ball before the player has to go back to replay the stroke, Rishi’s caddie began looking for the ball as his opponents looked on. ‘‘My caddie found the ball the minute the referee said that five minutes were up. Anyway, I went back to the tee to play the shot again and went on to make an eight.’’

But, he also remembers carding steady scores and playing conservatively. ‘‘I think if I remember correctly I shot 73, 74, 74 and 74 as I was just trying to get the scores in.’’ And as soon as the news went around that they were in winning position, people came out to watch. ‘‘I was playing ahead, in fact Lakshman heard my score and relaxed a bit as Amit had a high score and we needed to get a good score in,’’ says Rishi. No sooner had they finished playing people started heading out to the course, though there were not too many people out there before that. The news was announced on the radio continuously since, as Rishi remembers: ‘‘There was not much television coverage in those days so they have no such footage of the event.’’

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On a personal level, this achievement gave Rishi a lot of confidence in his game and a lot of self satisfaction. ‘‘In a sense, I did exactly what Shiv has done now, I came from college and went back to college after playing.’’

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