New Delhi: About the time when Vijay Kumar Having become a household name in sports newsrooms in the second half of the 1990s, though little was known about him, a colleague with roots in Lucknow said that the golfer’s father, a railway batsman assigned to his father, used to take him to school and back, with him sitting on a central bicycle on a short tube. Against the backdrop of a nascent professional golf scene in India, where Vijay Kumar dominated the Order of Merit by winning it for four consecutive years between 1995 and 2000, then in a very competitive field that included pioneers like Ali Sher and Rohtas Singh and Daniel Crossover included Daniel and international players. Chiranjeev), Nikhilao’s own Vijay Kumar was an exceptional heavyweight.Go beyond limits with our YouTube channel. Subscribe now!Vijay Kumar lived and died in Martin Purwa, an urban village on the north-eastern edge of the Lucknow Golf Club, once La Martiniere Golf Club, sitting cheek by jowl with the Chief Minister’s residence. As his presence on the Indian tour has been infrequent over the past decade and a half, he seemed to enjoy relative anonymity, happy to run the pro shop on the course, and keep quiet with some coaching. Located barely a golf ball’s distance from the course, Martin Purva residents must serve as greenkeepers and groundspersons, or better, for members of the club. This is the story of every Indian caddy pro — who comes from socially and economically disadvantaged sections of society, spends enough time on the course to learn every blade of grass, picks up a hand-me-down club, and then turns pro himself. Vijay embodied the true meaning of the idea of a ‘professional golfer’ — pursuing the sport as a livelihood, the competitive part included. This kind of Rashid Khan ‘No option golfer’ says. “Vijay Chacha and many others like him always joined leadership groups, because there was no option. He had to win to run his house. We all have to do it,” says Rashid. Pippin, the Delhi Golf Club’s fairway fakir if ever there was one, agreed. “If you look closely at the final scoresheets of major international tournaments in our time, you will always find us hovering near the winner’s list. That’s because we needed to do well.” “Behar kia jana, yeh jeet to rahe hai…” used to be Vijay Kumar’s constant reply when asked why someone so dominant on the Indian tour could care so little about playing regularly in Asia, Japan or trying out for Europe. Perhaps it was the inherent inhibitions born of his class that was holding him back, but Vijay, a Rawat passi, always deflected further inquiries with a shrug over his shoulder, “Aman yaar, chai palao…”. In 2002, he played the perfect host when someone visited him at Martin Purva. It was after he won the Indian Open and one expected him to enter the silent powerhouse of Indian golf. But everyone got the same sentence answers. Approachable but famously polite, Vijay Kumar was an unspoken alpha in his peer group in the 1990s and 2000s, traveling ‘for work’ in unsecured train coaches, living in six-to-one halls during the week. A moment stands in the memory. Widely favored to win the Indian Open in 1998, he had to miss it due to a wrist injury at the Pro-Am. Four years later, as he walked, in his unprecedented move to complete a long-overdue victory on the 18th hole, his adoring clan followed him, almost claiming his own victory. In the late afternoon sun at the DGC, he seemed to be floating on a thousand shoulders as he approached the final green. He was only 57, but Vijay, heavyset in a way that wasn’t cynical, and surprisingly articulate but only when he wanted to, always looked old. With his size, he was swinging the club with such lightness and control as if it had been sawn in half. Pippin remembers a ‘deleterious’ golfer. “He didn’t know what pressure meant.” It was the winter of either ’99 or 2000 at Noida Golf Course. Somehow it went to a playoff between Vijay and a golfer from Chandigarh. Watching, even we felt the nerves. But Vijay looked around, saw a familiar face and asked him for tobacco. He said with his mouth full, “What a pressure, now it’s fun…”
