Glory on the greens : Caddies dominate golf as Ali Sher wins Wills Indian Open

Sports

The usual crowds which arrived for their week-end game at the exclusive Delhi Golf Club (DGC) on March 30 were in for a surprise-offerings laddus by beaming caddies. Eighty kilos of laddus were distributed that day. One man picked up the tab: 26-year-old Ali Sher, a former caddie who had just won Rs.5 lakh with a historic victory at the Wills Indian Open Golf Championship which has a total prize money of $1,50,000 (Rs.30 lakh). He became only the second Indian to win the prestigious title-after a gap of 26 years.

Ali Sher’s spectacular Indian Open win along with Basad Ali’s fourth place and Santosh Kumar’s joint ninth place, against tough foreign competition, is the most decisive sign that the caddie-turned-professional is storming Indian golf. About 115 of the 126 professionals now playing in India started out as caddies. The top three Indian professionals-Basad Ali, Rohtas Singh and Ali Sher-have won 15 of the 29 tournaments in the 1990-91 Indian circuit. Delhi’s Rishi Narain is the only non-caddie to have won a tournament on the same circuit.

Ali Sher's family and relatives
Ali Sher’s family and relatives
What the top caddie-professionals have in common is hard work. “I practise for four to five hours a day,” says Ali Sher who struggled through his early years as caddie. “Ali Sher has a fantastic swing,” says Rishi Narain.

Ali Sher wears his glory lightly as does his family. In the dung-littered Nizamuddin basti where he lives with his wife Sitara Begum, four children, three brothers (Ali Hasan and Ali Jan are professional golfers), his mother and cousins (Nazuruddin and little Yousuf are caddies), there are no unwrapped packets of glittering presents.

Keeping Ali Sher company at the top is Calcutta’s Basad Ali, 33, for whom topping the Indian circuit has become something of a habit. His affair with golf began on the day his father found him a job as a caddie in the Royal Calcutta Golf Club. He isn’t even sure he wants his children to take to the game. “They have to study,” he says

Ali Sher's moment of triumph
Ali Sher’s moment of triumph
“The DGC can do a lot more for caddies,” says Arjuna Award winner and amateur golfer Vikramjit Singh, who is a member. Now playing caddies-forecaddies get Rs.15 for four hours and caddies Rs25, apart from tips-are not even given club facilities. If Ali Sher or Basad Ali need to get a bite or a drink of water after a hard day, they have to walk past the annexe of the DGC where members look out onto the undulating greens sipping their sundowners, to the canteen where caddies huddle on the dirty floor.

“They have to groom themselves better,” says a condescending Rishi Narain. That must be why Basad Ali had to wait outside the club annexe while someone went in to get him the Grindlays Bank cheque for Rs.1,24,000 that he had won at the Indian Open.

Ali Sher’s Indian Open victory – which he followed up with a record score in the Addi Open-should encourage more sponsors, apart from infusing more talent into the game and grading tournament for caddies. Then the hundreds of caddies will have more to dream about.

source: http://www.indiatoday.intoday.in / India Today.in / Home> Archive> Sport> Story / by Binoo K. John / April 30th, 1991