Par for the course

In fact, a golf course holds quite a few lessons for architects full of hubris about improving the environment through their interventions. Here it is the utter absence of built form which is so soothing. In Mumbai, the biggest course is the BPGC Bombay Presidency Golf Club, where the season is in full swing. Established in 1927 as the New Golf Club, it quickly became the favourite watering hole for homesick expatriates. Today, the club is wreathed by Chembur8217;s toxicity, but its first site was in more salubrious Bandra Golf Links even in 8217;97.

A growing population wanting to settle in Bandra elbowed off the BPGC to another dingy corner: this time it was Sewree.That precinct8217;s soaring popularity in the late 8217;30s as the best place in Mumbai to dump effluents, store cargo and set up poky industrial outfits; didn8217;t go down too well with well-heeled golfers. They shifted house once again. The present site was part of the Collector8217;s largess bequeathed to the BPGC in the late 8217;30s. Enthusiastic members went about creating a little English clubhouse, replete with pretty casements, a wooden raftered ceiling and a wonderfully nostalgic bar.

Much of the original structure is still intact, although beset by leakage and maintenance problems. It isn8217;t quite in the same league as the Royal Calcutta Golf Club an elaborate, multi-tiered pile of imperial pomp. But what BPGC lacks in grandeur it makes up in the cantonment brand of charm and functional detailing.After Partition, the club had to part with some of its 90-odd acres to rehouse refugees fleeing Pakistan. Members cheerfully accommodated Chembur Camp all around the club. Camp residents responded to this generosity by allowing the golfers to shatter their window panes from time to time.

The rest of the while, the residents feasted their eyes on the carefully nurtured greenery, host to a variety of fauna, including hares, snakes and dozens of different species of birds.For the BPGC, it wasn8217;t just a matter of acquiring land and allowing the grass to grow. They had to contend with the poor quality of soil, and after giving away the higher part of their holdings for refugee resettlement; they were left with a badly drained, low-lying, rocky outcrop, spotted with sere grass and bereft of even the requisite 18 holes.

The present lush landscape owes its existence to the efforts of international champion Peter Thomson. He designed the basic course layout, selected the trees which demarcate the fairways even today, and made the best of a plot bisected by a thoroughfare. Reminisces avid golfer and member of the club, Sharad Divecha, quot;The soft, velvety Calcutta dhoop grass which covers the greens today was brought over from the Eden Gardens.

And the crab grass over the fairways 8212; a short bladed, tough and indigenous variety 8212; has actually helped the BPGC. Normally, the length of a championship golf course should be 6,700 yard. Our course is 6,189 yard, but the crab grass limits the roll of the ball. So the effective length of the course increases.

quot;From an initial seven members, the club has grown to 1,600. The BPGC has decided that it8217;s high time their clubhouse did too. On the anvil is a proposed vertical extension to this heritage structure and all the necessary appurtenances of any-self respecting club 8212; pool, sauna, jacuzzi, tennis courts et al. Will the charm recede? No, avers Divecha, quot;Our heritage is the golfing tradition. And that will continue.quot;