IN FULL SWING: Victory at the Singapore Masters has taken Atwal into golf's top 200

There is golf and there's golf. There's one variety played by executives as part of the bizarre code of corporate life, by bureaucrats with the clout to get into stuffy clubs and by retired folk with time on their hands.

Then there's Golf. Played by Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia, Retief Goosen, who are not really famous executives, bureaucrats and retired people, but the world's top professional golfers with million-dollar bank accounts and private planes. Any given week, only 150-odd golfers each are eligible to play on the top two rungs of pro golf: the United States' Professional Golf Association (PGA) Tour and the European (EPGA) Tour.

On that list of men that doesn't even total 350 (there are more golf courses in Colorado alone than card-carrying pros), there is now an Indian winner. His name is Arjun Atwal, he's going to be 30 on March 20 and he comes from Kolkata. Shake his hand. He just won the Singapore Masters, a cheque of $150,030 (Rs 72 lakh), a world ranking inside the top 200 and a spot on the US' Golf Magazine list of the 10 hottest golfers on the EPGA Tour.

In case the enormity hasn't sunk in, there's more: Atwal is one of only two Indian golfers-ever-to have qualified for the EPGA tour. He is Mister Spock to Jeev Milkha Singh's Captain James T. Kirk, the two boldly going where no countryman has gone before, his win a deep Indian footprint on alien terrain.

On the final day in the Singapore Masters, Atwal was the picture of the strangest calm, strolling around the Laguna National like it were Sunday at the Tollygunge Club. His name didn't ring any bells but his game forced the spotlight away from six-time Majors winner and comeback man Nick Faldo.

"Five or six Indians have the game to play in Europe if they are ready to sacrifice." Jeev Milkha Singh, India's first EPGA professional

Old guys, the cynics will sneer, looking for last hurrahs in one of those joint-sanctioned events which allow the "European" tour to travel to South Africa, the Gulf, south-east Asia and Australia for a minimum of $750,000 prize money. But cynicism misses the wood, the trees and the entire cruel beauty of golf. While Atwal stalked history in Singapore, the world's top 66 professionals played in California, where the No. 62 seed beat the No. 45 for the million-dollar top prize. Tiger Woods was beaten in the first round by an Australian called Peter O'Malley. In golf, depth of field is not a concept from photography, it is daily reality.

Unlike other sports, in golf men do not face off across a net, a ring or a field. They are fellow footsoldiers, fighting the course, with its odd geography, the local weather and themselves, the kinks in their game and the doubts in their mind.

Atwal had wiped his doubts clean in Singapore. Not even the sight of the great Faldo loping up ahead of him took his eye off his own game. "If there was anyone who was going to beat me, it was me," he says. Prior to Singapore, a classical golf swing and blazing runs seemed to be his signature. In 1996 Atwal, a long-shot qualifier in the Buick Classic on the killingly competitive USPGA Tour, ran second behind world No. 5 Ernie Els before falling away. This winter, his first five EPGA events came and went without a top 10 finish. Two weeks before Singapore, Atwal seized the lead in two Asian Tour events, the Hero Honda Masters and the London Myanmar Open, before letting go. But all the time in his bones he knew that the exchange between ball and club was getting both smoother and sharper. "I thought I was going to win this year and I figured it would be soon," he says. An EPGA title victory is an elusive butterfly; as Singh has discovered after five tough years on the Tour. Atwal's win-three months after earning his Tour card through the qualifying school (tournament) in Spain-has, he says, "broken a barrier". The two men have broken very big barriers in just venturing out on the EPGA Tour.

The son of a wealthy Kolkata businessman from a golf-mad family, Atwal dropped out of college in the US and turned professional, joining the newly formed Asian PGA Tour in 1995, winning the title of the Rookie of the Year and following it up with three Asian Tour titles in six years. It would have been easy to settle for an annual income of $100,000 a year from the Asian Tour, close to the comforts of home. Brandon D'Souza, head of Tiger Sports Marketing, says, "Arjun wanted to do this for himself. He broke the shackles of being the boy who had everything."

It is the way the extraordinary stand apart from the ordinary. Atwal wanted to be back in the throng of the tough US circuit just like Jeev who hacked out the first path. The senior pro is glad for the company. "It's great Arjun's come along. Now there's someone to speak to in the same language," he says. The two played the practice round in Singapore and on the final day Singh followed his friend's triumphant walk around the course. "Arjun has improved every year, he has got his goals set." Atwal refuses to discuss those in public: "If you're working hard, you find yourself in the right place doing the right thing." He will now try to find his feet on the EPGA Tour as it moves west with the summer and will return to the US Tour qualifiers. Thousands attempt the "School", only the top 35 win Tour cards.

Atwal is not a Plato of the putting green and laughs that he would rather watch a Govinda movie than read a book; but he has gone from being sports-car-loving, medium-range party-animal to a married man who meditates. "Skillwise I don't think he's different, it's his mental make-up that has changed," says Inderjit Bhalotia, Atwal's friend and fellow golfer from the age 13. Two years ago, they visited a yoga school in Munger, Bihar. Atwal found that meditation added muscle to his mental game. "It showed me mind-boggling results."

It really is all in the mind. Singh believes making the jump from Asia to Europe is bigger than Europe to the US. "Five or six players in India already have the game to play on the European tour-if they're ready to make the sacrifice. That's the message I've wanted to get through to guys I played with in India. If Jeev can do it, why not us?" Atwal's win has now added a rider: if one Indian can win, what's stopping the others from trying?