Chawrasia: an indelible Sunday scar?

Special feature by Anand Datla

It was a sordid Sunday for SSP Chawrasia at the Delhi Golf Club. The winds were swirling, the trees were swaying. Right on cue and unfortunately so, Chawrasia chose the moment to awaken the ghost within. As he wandered with the ancient spirits that inhabit the hallowed greens, Chawrasia squandered a great opportunity to make a lasting impression.

In over thirty years of following this impeccable art called golf, the one memory that kept haunting me through the day flew in from Carnoustie. It was 1999 and a nice young man called Jean van de Velde was at the par-4 18^th tee with one hand on the Claret Jug.

He needed a six to become an Open Champion. As I watched in horror, the Frenchman wafted through thick grass and water before making the most gruesome triple bogey golf has ever known.

The man fell into a playoff, but his bruised heart was barely beating and he surrendered the Jug to Paul Lawrie.

Chawrasia’s stutter on Sunday was not so sudden, it was like a slow death. One bit at a time starting at the 3^rd hole. A bogey and a double are far from an ideal start, when you are walking with an invite for a victory parade.

The 36 year old, who played with an air of certainty through the first three rounds, embraced doubt and his sinews followed the master into a dark alley. The round that followed was as much a study in golf as it may have been a case for psychoanalysis.

Chawrasia knows the Delhi course and its tables better than most, every little detail boldly imprinted on the upper layers of his neural networks. But on Sunday, he was wafting with the wind like a stranger at his own party, as though he were navigating a maze.

By the time he reached the 16^th, Anirban Lahiri, who was seven shots behind at the start of the day was breathing into Chawrasia’s neck. And the heat of the bull rattled the man from Kolkata, enough to push him off the edge on which he was living that day.

The man who walked the fairways with a degree of majesty for three glorious days was now scrambling in the thick, twisty foliage off the 16^th fairway in search of his ball. When he eventually found it, he used it to nail the last pin into his battered soul.

“Victory and defeat,” said Thomas Jefferson, “are each of the same price.” But then what the former gives in abundance is often taken away by the later, often leaving an indelible scar. Chawrasia is bound to carry this scar for the rest of his journey through the greens and perhaps some woods.