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At Royal, Chawrasia wants to be a good host
"I didn’t even dream of this", says the second Indian golfer to have a tournament named after him.
It is unusual for a professional golfer to go into a tournament merely hoping for four days to pass off without incident. But then, it is not usual to be playing in one named after you. Which explains why SSP Chawrasia said all he wished for was the SSP Chawrasia Invitational Golf ended well. Not only for him though – that will be a bonus.
Chawrasia, 45, is the second Indian player to host a tournament, after Jeev Milkha Singh.
“The difference between hosting a tournament and just playing in one is that you are also part of the organisers,” said Chawrasia ahead of the 124-player event that starts at the 194-year-old Royal Calcutta Golf Club (RCGC) here on Thursday.
“That means looking into stuff like entries. I have some spots in the amateur and pro-am sections. Not everyone knows the kind of schedule a professional golfer keeps so I am getting a lot more calls now.”
Taking more than the usual number of calls or his phone burning with messages inquiring about entries hasn’t clouded Chawrasia’s essentially sunny disposition. “Look, I didn’t even dream of this. I can’t explain how great a feeling this is, to be hosting a tournament over the course I grew up on,” he said.
This is the second edition of the Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI) event and has a total prize purse of ₹1 crore. It is being staged jointly by the tour and Take Sports, who are also Chawrasia’s sponsors.
At 16, Sukhraj Singh Gill from Canada is the youngest participant in the competition where the winner will get ₹15 lakh. The field includes defending champion Manu Gandas, 2023 tour leader Om Prakash Chouhan and three-time PGTI Order of Merit winner Rashid Khan, who has two top-two finishes this year, including one at the Kapil Dev Grant Thornton Invitational in Delhi last week. Barring Jamal Hossain of Bangladesh, who pulled out on Tuesday, everyone in the PGTI top 20 is taking part.
A field this strong is an appropriate hat-tip to Chawrasia, a four-time winner on the European Tour who also has six titles on the Asian Tour, has won the Indian Open twice, was at Rio Olympics and the 2016 World Cup of Golf. Chawrasia has a career-high world ranking of 151 (in 2016 after winning the Indian Open) and 17 titles as a professional. He was conferred the Arjuna award in 2017.
That was also the year when he last won a tournament, the Indian Open. In 46 events since, including the 2021 Laguna Phuket Championship and the Taiwan Glass Taifong Open, which ended on Sunday, Chawrasia has three top-10 finishes. In 2022, he lost his European Tour card and his ranking has slipped to 1225 from 748 in 2021.
Chawrasia’s best this year has been fifth in The DGC Open. He comes in – he was T21 here last year – having missed the cut in six of the last seven tournaments. In 18 events this year, he has missed the cut in 11.
The good news? He made the final weekend in Taiwan, finishing T30. “The last two years didn’t go well for me,” he said at RCGC. “But you just have to keep working and try to get out of the slump.”
Wanting to cut down on travel, Chawrasia said he isn’t missing not playing on the European Tour, especially now that the “Asian Tour has got bigger”.
In the year of the Olympics, it is on the Asian Tour he will focus on, said Chawrasia. I am not thinking of doing anything different with Paris in mind, he said.
The comment fit with his determination to stave off “extra pressure” after having lived with it for “25-26 years”. Next week, Chawrasia will play in Saudi Arabia before ending the year with the Tata Steel Tour Championship in Jamshedpur. The results may not be reflecting it, but Chawrasia said he has been playing well and is looking ahead to 2024. And to “at least five years after that”. It will be the seniors tour in Europe after that. “As a multiple winner, all I have to do is to turn 50.”
