BEWARE Mr. Tiger Woods

Weekends in Bangaluru could be a boring affair and hence immigrants like me need to come up with various techniques to pass their time. Some of the things I tend to do can be listed down as follows – spend time with friends at CCD, go swimming, watch TV, movies and sleep. While a few of the above techniques successfully ensure that you can have fun for a couple of hours, the rest push a person closer to the ultimate sin, otherwise knows as laziness. Thus, people need to innovate and come up with unique ideas so that no two weekends seem the same. My latest innovation was to try and beat Mr. Tiger Woods at his own game – Golf.

To be honest, the credit for this innovativeness goes to my roommate G. It was he who suggested that we go play Golf. The Golfing academy had set up a promotional offer for employees of Wipro and G had won a free training session at the SPT Golf Academy off Sarjapura Road. The idea to go golfing was discussed by us for quite a few weeks, but it wasn’t until yesterday that we finally decided to pick up our lazy asses and drag them to the open grounds. As a build up, I had been keenly following the USPGA tour on Ten Sports on Saturday night and Sunday morning and was all set for the match up between ‘Tiger Arora’ and ‘Tiger Shanbhag’!!!

The appointment was at 3pm and we reached there a few minutes before time after picking up our friend SG along the way. After getting to the course, we realized that it was just a training academy and the prospective match between ‘Tiger Arora’ and ‘Tiger Shanbhag’ would not be possible on this turf.
The Academy was well designed and had a dozen or so booths from where golfers could ‘tee off’ in the wide open space in front of them. We met up with our head coach Mr. Rajan who told us that while he would offer the free training to ‘Tiger Arora’, SG and myself would have to pay for the bucket of 50 golf balls and ‘tee off’ for fun. He was, however, kind enough to show all of us how to grip the golf club and the posture that one needs to adopt to ‘tee off’ successfully.

For those with a non golfing background, the word ‘tee off’ is usually used for the first shot played by the golfers at every hole. It basically means to hit the ball in the air so that it travels a few 100 yards in front towards its ultimate goal – the Green. The ‘Green’ here is referred to the nicely cut, flat grassy portion surrounding the flag, which is inserted in the hole.

After showing us one shot, Mr. Rajan headed off with G towards a smaller ‘green’ adjacent to the tee off booths. That left SG and me to start our ‘tee off’ journey. I took the first turn. The aim, in front of me, consisted of two holes at a distance of 50 yards and 160 yards, which I knew thanks to the two metal boards which were ideally placed at the 50 and 1oo yards distance from the booths. I placed the little white golf ball in the small grassy turf provided in the booth. I lifted my hands back, with the golf club to a 9 o’clock position which we were told would be sufficient for a good hit and took a full swing ahead.
After completing my swing, I even looked ahead to see how far I had hit the ball. But it wasn’t too late for me to realize that I had completely missed the ball, which was lying in the exact same position that I had placed it in!!......OOPS

I readjusted my stance and took another swing.

Missed again!!!

Somehow, the thought occurred to me that ball was placed wrongly. So after few more adjustments, I swung again. This time I managed to connect the ball. However, to my dismay the ball flew to my right, hit the post of my booth with a loud CLANG, and traveled 10 yards behind me!!!!!

OOPS!!! – The loud noise ensured that all golfers nearby were starring at my booth wondering what had just happened. Not a good start at all for Tiger Shanbhag. I knew I had to work hard.

After giving a Mogambo laugh at my first try, SG took her first putt and after a small struggle managed to hit to the ball close to the 50 yard green.

My try again. After hitting the post once, I cleverly decided to switch to the wider booth next to mine to avoid another glance of the South Korean players who were teeing off from neighbouring booths. After a few missed swings I managed to hit the ball around 5ft in the air and crossed the 50 yards board.

“Not a bad effort”, I thought to myself.

I kept trying and it was my 7th or 8th ball that I managed to hit in the air!! It traveled around 70 yards and gave me a tremendous feel of confidence.

SG and me had exhausted our first bucket of 50 balls in little less than 30 mins. Of the 20 or so tries I took, I only managed to hit 3 – 4 balls in the air as desired. The effort was still good, considering that it was my first affair with the golf club. The club that we had been provided was a basic ‘lite graphite’ club for beginners. The actual clubs used by professional golfers comes in various makes like Iron and Wood and are numbered from 1 to 10. The lower numbers are used for long distance hitting while the clubs with a larger number are meant for small distance putting. The wood make is normally used only by experts for more accuracy and distance which is heavily dependent on the speed and direction of the wind at the golf course.

Tiger Arora by now had completed his basic training and was assigned a separate booth to tee off along side ours. After a little break and refreshments, I decided to give my golf skills another try. I bought myself another bucket of 50 balls. This time around I was more determined to improve my hitting average and hence diligently practiced a few swings without the ball. After I felt confident, I placed the ball in position and started teeing off.
As expected I was getting better. I managed to hit 4 out of the first 10 balls in the air covering a distance from somewhere between 50 to 80 yards. Than after a while, my luck smiled at me.
A full swing of the club launched the ball straight ahead of me, a long distance in the air. I knew I had managed to hit the ball well. It traveled and traveled and finally landed where I had least expected – 110 yards!!!

Tiger Shanbhag was finally here!!!!!

I waved out to SG and Tiger Arora in the canteen who I assumed acknowledged my success. My confidence sky rocketed and I felt like a cricket player, who is handed a test cap by his captain at the beginning of his debut test match, to the greetings of his fellow teammates.

I kept teeing off with my new found success and though I didn’t manage to hit the 100 yards mark again that afternoon, I had become accustomed to hitting 2 out of 5 balls in the air to a distance of around 80 yards consistently.

It was 5pm by now and a few more golfers had managed to drive down to the academy and could be seen warming up for a tee off behind me. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t done any sort of warm up and hence was feeling a slight strain in my arms which had taken around 70 – 80 successful and missed swings by now.
I had about 5 balls left to go, and just to show that I was no novice, I too did a little stretching with the club in my hand trying to somehow show that I was warming down after a hard day.

It was overall an exciting and fun filled day. I had learnt something new today and the 100 yards hit and my little acting in the end aptly fit the punch of the new Accenture ad featuring Mr. Tiger Woods –

“JUST ANOTHER DAY IN THE OFFICE FOR THE TIGER”