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Giving flavor of India's golf legacy to world: Bharat Ram

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This Monday my column turns a chapter in history. The role of the industrialist Bharat Ram in making a big contribution to golf, much before the new devotees of the game arrived. Bharat Ram built Indian golf and brought it structure.

He was instrumental in building the Delhi Golf Club, which somewhat marked the golf scene in the capital region and for helping institute the Indian Golf Union, which for many years was the only golf body in the country. He brought the world's best players of the time and encouraged them to play on Indian soil.

This not only helped promote the game, it also gave a flavor of how India's golf legacy (second only to Scotland's) to the world's top players then. One such player was Peter Thomson who I had the good fortune of spending time with. This was last week when I met him for The Bharat Ram Centenary celebrations, which gave the golfing fraternity to remember the man. His grandsons Ashish and Kartik Bharat Ram, who run SRF do a stellar job of keeping his legacy alive.

Bharat Ram and Peter Thompson became friends and the latter – a five time British Open champion - helped grow Indian golf in a meaningful way. Thomson was a star and everyone wanted his attention. Luckily the Australian legend, was driven by the idea of growing and spreading the buzz about the sport in Asia and further east. He spent time and energy investing in the sport here and his friendship with Bharat Ram helped him achieve that.

"He was the best man to go to if you wanted to help golf in India. I was in awe of him. He was so good and generous and loved the game so passionately and he knew everyone," Thomson recalled. Bharat Ram was known to be the relationships man for the Shriram group and that brought him closer to efforts such as golf. He was the face of the business while Bharat Ram's brother Charat
Ram managed the factories.

Thomson was generous enough then to visit India several times and even played in the Indian Open, which he won three times, to encourage the sport in India both for pros and amateurs. Thomson was the first winner of the Indian Open in 1964. Working together with Bharat Ram, he redesigned the Delhi Golf Course.

He would say in a conversation with me, that the course and its forest like terrain lent itself brilliantly to a course. Best courses are not designed but offer natural beauty that can be retained to make the course challenging. "It was fun working on it, though sometimes difficult to play on a course you have helped re-design."

Thomson, now 85 still remembers his experiences at the Delhi Golf Club and his friendships that developed thanks to Bharat Ram. Thomson had brought the replica he received when he won the trophy in 1976 at the Indian Open, and he held it aloft to reminisce those moments.

The Delhi Golf Club was virtually a second home for Bharat Ram, who till his last years was a regular golf at the course despite his frail frame. He always had time for people who wanted to hear stories of the good old days of how golf began in India. For all his efforts, India is proud to have a golf history in the first place.

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