New Delhi, Feb 21(.) Arjun Atwal, the first Indian to win on the PGA tour feels that Indian Golfers should be more ambitious and compete regularly in the premium international tours.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the ’72 The League’ on Saturday he said that Indian golfers can win in the biggest tours provided that they start competing in them more frequently
“if you want to know how good you can be, you should go to Europe or US PGA tour to test yourself, that is what I wanted to do, I got lucky I was from a family where I could afford to travel so for me it was more about trying to get as good as I could to compete with the best in the world. I lived my dream, my sincere advise to all the young pros here- I am sure you are doing great at home, I see the scores they are unbelievable, but you got to push yourself, get uncomfortable, get out there and try to beat the world, it can be done”, he said.
The ’72 The League’ will be India’s first franchise based professional Golf league. The league will be played in Delhi NCR from February 24 to March 6. The league will be played across three of Delhi NCR’s Golf venues- Classic Golf & Country Club, Qutab Golf Course and Jaypee Greens.
The Arjuna Awardee noted the growth of Golf in the country since the time when he started off
“The first tournament I played was in Bombay, I made Rs 1280, it was not a question of making a living on the Indian tour at that time it was about gaining experience, how to compete, learning to make the cuts, and eventually learning to win, I learnt all these things here on this Tour. Today you can make a pretty good living out of playing the PGTI tour, every week they are playing for some serious money and it is only going up with the sponsorship that was signed with the DP world as the main sponsor.”
Atwal who is the Brand Ambassador of ’72 The League’ felt that Golf’s inclusion in the Olympics is another factor pushing rise of Golf in the country and felt confident that the sport will win medals for the country at the games “That is a huge development, more than anything else it drives the government to get behind Golf, so that the sport fetches us medals at the games. I want to have meetings with every sports minister of all the states, to tell them about my plan for the growth of Golf. I can guarantee them that Golf can get medals, and I know golf can get medals, Aditi(Ashok) came so close at the Tokyo games.”
He said that he agreed to become the brand ambassador of the league as he wants to give back to the sport that has given him so much
“what I can do to give back. How can we make this game more popular with the masses, I want to do that, I want to be a part of that. Golf like cricket was brought here by the Brits one took off and another is about to take off. The way our economy has grown, more people can now afford to play Golf the infrastructure needs to improve where we have more public access to golf courses, golf ranges.”
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