Nov 16, 1998

Golf as all play and all work for the young and old alike in this tiny village.

By Farzand Ahmed

It's a warm, pleasant Sunday morning and Martinpura, a tiny hamlet in Uttar Pradesh's Lucknow district, basks in the golden light of the October sun. Three-year-old Juhi squats under the shade of a neem tree intently fixing her putter. That fixed she picks up her goli (ball) and runs towards a group of children who are busy digging holes in the village greens. The game begins. "Fore, fore," shouts five-year-old Chanchal as his friends protest "drop, drop". Words like iron, tee and birdie echo as the children wade through the bushes. Some furlongs away, one hears similar terms being bandied about. This time the venue is the Lucknow Golf Club and the Wills Northern India Open Golf Championship is in progress. As the players battle it out, it is obvious this is no child's play.

In Martinpura, however, it appears so as even toddlers can be spotted with their golis and iron. Golf is the presiding game for the young and old alike. Named after French adventurer Major-General Claude Martin, this golf village nestles behind Constantia, once Martin's home and for the past 150 years the La Martiniere School. With a population of over 4,000, dominated by Dalits and Yadavs, the village is proud of its association with the game. And not without reason. Names of the natives here read like the who's who in the golf circuit. While Prithvi Raj, Lal Chand, Uma Shankar and Laxman Singh are some of the golfing heroes of yesteryears, current stars among the top 10 in the national circuit include Vijay Kumar, Sanjay Kumar, Jumman, Hari Ram, Bhoop Singh and Rajesh Kumar Rawat.

"Golf is in our genes," says Vijay, national champion and Mahindra Player of the Year 1997-98. It should be. Father Laxman Singh was the national champion 20 years ago. Sanjay, winner of last year's Color-Plus Golf Championship in Chennai, is the son of Gaya Prasad, caddie master of the Lucknow Golf Club. Sanjay also was placed eleventh in the Professional Golf Association of India tournament in 1996-97.

The golf village could easily qualify as churning out the largest number of caddies -- who graduate to golfers. Almost all the current golf stars of Martinpura were once caddies. According to Vijay's uncle Chandrashekhar, most of the village's 1,500-odd children pick up the iron and start playing the day they learn to walk. Eighteen-year-old Manoj, a former caddie now practising with sahebs in the golf club to become a player, says the children pick up used equipment like balls, clubs, putters thrown on the field and play with them. Or else they make their own crude clubs with wooden sticks.

Martinpura's inhabitants don't exactly remember when their association with the game began. Raj Kumar, caddie-turned-national player, recalls his grandfather saying that several decades ago a gora sahib (white man), while walking through the village with his retinue, was bewildered to see some boys playing a game with curved sticks and wooden balls which they hit towards holes. Village folklore has it that the gora sahib was so taken up by their game that he asked some of the older children to follow him to the golf club and work as caddies. Since then there has been no looking back. One after the other the village lads, most of them semi-literate, go to the Lucknow Golf Club to work as caddies and later become national stars rubbing shoulders with members of royal families and bureaucrats. Adesh Saith, the club's captain, says the village youth have natural talent which is why the club patronises them.

It's not all play and no work in this golf village. In fact, the game itself has become the main source of bread and butter for the villagers since many of them work at the golf club. A caddie earns Rs 20 a day and nearly 60 villagers make their living from golf. The game has also brought affluence to the established players.

The Lucknow Golf Club, recognising Martinpura's contribution to the game, opened a school early this year for the village children. So for Juhi, Chanchal and all those unlettered little golfers-in-the-making, going to school is an entirely different ball game.

© Living Media India Ltd