Lessons Required

I went to play golf at the Delhi Golf Club yesterday morning.  I was reluctant to go.  Then I told myself I had to go otherwise I’ll never get started.  I went back and forth on that for about an hour as I was taking a shower and having breakfast. But then I did make it out there.

Delhi Golf Club is the most prestigious, and therefore also the most expensive, of the 4 or 5 courses in New Delhi.  This doesn’t include Gurgaon and Noida but I don’t have any plans of driving all the way there quite yet for golf.  I got there about 9:30 AM.  It is about 20 to 22 km from home.  Depending on when I go, it’s anywhere from a 30 minute to a one hour fifteen, maybe even one hour thirty, minute drive.

DGC has two courses – the 9-hole and the 18-hole.   It also has the driving range.  The 18-hole course is closed on Mondays.  The place was empty except for two people at the driving range when I got there.  People may have been on the course itself but no one was lining up to get started nor were there people coming and going.  I walked around a bit and found the environment wonderful.  It was clean.  It was well-maintained.  It was posh, for India.  I add that disclaimer because clean and well-maintained seem to take on a very different meaning to me when I think of the courses I have been on in the US.  They are clean also.  But they just seem so much cleaner.  I wonder why that is.  Anyway, DGC took the cake.  Very nice place.

Like I normally would, I looked for the office.  I figured I would talk to the manager and find out about costing as well as about membership.  I knew from my research that DGC was the most celebrated course in Delhi.  I then found out really how much.  The current waiting list is 22 years.  I asked the man I was talking to why even have a list that long.  He was a bit surprised by my question.  I told him I didn’t want to wait that long and left.  I thought, if I really did want membership, I’d be able to find someone I knew in my family or family friends who was on the board and I’d get it much quicker than 22 years.  I also knew I wasn’t going to be in India in 22 years.  It was good to have the basic information down though.  This way when I mention my golfing adventure as a story, I’ve got an interesting anecdote I could share.  22 years! 

I wasn’t sure if I should hit the range.  I didn’t want to get myself into bad swing habits.  Even a day or two of golfing can ingrain your swing in your mind.  Then I would have to unlearn it.  I thought about that for a few minutes as I walked the grounds and quickly bunked the notion.  I was going to hit some balls!

I went back to the counter at the entrance where I was to pay.  It was really quite inexpensive.  Rs. 225 is for the driving range.  Rs. 50 gets you 50 balls and Rs. 75 gets you 100.  I went for the 100, figuring if I wanted more, I could come back.  The entire practice round cost me Rs. 300.  That’s between $7 and $8 depending on the exchange rate.  That’s a paltry sum compared to what I would have paid in the US.  Hah, I suckered them golf Gods!  Why was I satisfied by that?  Who knows.  But I did get a little joy out of it!

The bucket was to have 50 balls but had 40, maybe 42.  I figured this out because there was no way it was 50, it just didn’t seem like there were that many in the bucket.  Turned out there almost was.  Golf being a gentleman’s game, I wasn’t going to haggle about it.  I was going to mention it to the dude managing the counter.  If he was going to resist or give me a hard time, I was going to brush it off.  This was my first day there too, after all.  I didn’t want to piss people off, even the “peons” (I don’t like it when people call staff that).

I have to admit I really enjoyed hitting the ball and being out on the course, err, driving range.  There was some real feeling of enjoyment and a sense of peace too.  I think it felt peaceful because of the greenery, the trees, and the lack of people.  Or, maybe it was the golf itself.  No, I think it was the environment.  If that changes in the future, I’ll let you know.

About 25 balls into practice, I was doing fine.  Fine in the sense I wasn’t bothered about my really bad hitting.  After all, I had played about 5 times in my life, had never taken lessons, and hadn’t hit a ball in about 7 to 8 years.  I wasn’t expecting much but just to be hitting was enough. At about ball number 55, theory and expectation turned into reality – yes, I needed coaching!  I knew by then that I was in fact going to go home and contact the coach I had been referred to.

Oh, by the way, this is an interesting thing about DGC (and probably at other courses in India).  It has a short list of about 12 to 15 coaches that can train on the driving range there.  That’s it.  No one else is allowed to do it.  There are three tiers of coaches – A, B, and C. The A category is for those who already know what they’re doing but want to take their game to the next level.  Or, the rich folks who want those coaches from the get-go.  I would probably be one of those people who’d get an A category coach if I wasn’t so budget conscious (some day, money will be less of a concern but that some day is not today).  Why?  I always want to learn from the best.  This is even more important in the game of golf, as I have mentioned the importance of the swing.

The B category is the mid-tier and there’s the C category, presumably for beginners.  The fees for each coach is fixed.  For a C category coach, I will pay Rs. 400 per 30 minutes as a non-member.  It would have been Rs. 300 if I was a member.  For B category it was Rs. 600 (or Rs. 500).  The A category was Rs. 800 (or Rs. 700).  It seemed fairly reasonable to me because I knew coaches in the US don’t start for less than $25 per hour and that is the lowest of the low.  They’re usually anywhere from $50 to $100 per hour.  Yes, golf is a “gentleman’s” game in more than one sense of the word.

I got home and emailed the coach I was referred to last year.  She was on the list of C category coaches, which I found kind of interesting and amusing.  Why?  I wasn’t expecting there to be just a dozen coaches sanctioned to train at DGC!  I figured I would do 2 sessions with her per week and wanted to get the first one in on Thursday or Friday of this week.  I would practice 2-4 times as well, depending on if the course closest to me was in fact close and if it was in decent condition (decent being a relative term now that I’ve seen DGC).  If I’m spending 2.5 hours driving back and forth, that’ll definitely dent the frequency.

On the way back home, I stopped at Connaught Place (CP).  There are a few book stores there and I thought I might pick up an instructional book on golf.  If the concepts of libraries existed in India, I would have gotten one from the local branch.  But libraries are only at the embassies or at universities.  There is no local branch.  I found a couple of books that looked decent but they were hard cover and thick.  How would I carry those with me back to the US?  I decided I would find an electronic version of instructions online and combine it with my coach to learn.  If I felt I needed to buy the book, then I would do it after a few sessions.  This way, I wasn’t buying it and not using it.

I also called a friend to tell her about my playing golf.  Why?  Not quite sure.  I guess I had to tell someone.  Turns out this girl also wants to play.  I told her she should take courses with me.  If someone else was doing it too, it’d keep me motivated.  She readily agreed.  Well, sort of.  By the end of the conversation, she said she would meet me at the course and just watch.  She would not play.  She had her own clubs.  Her brother and her would play as kids.  She sounded like she wanted to do it.  But, anyhow, I’ll see if she comes out there.  It’d be good to have a regular friend to hang out with.

So, my friends, I have started playing golf!  This is an exciting time.  I have wanted to play since I graduated college.  It is finally happening.  I am finally using the clubs I bought 3 years ago.  They were brand new and sitting in storage until now.  Oh, that’s something else I should mention.  I wasn’t quite sure if I was going to play yesterday so I didn’t get my clubs ready.  When I was at the driving range, I had to sit on the seat near my area and quietly peel off the plastic covers.  It was funny and embarrasing as well.  Who comes to a golf course with brand new clubs that haven’t even been removed out of their packaging?