By Tariq Engineer
Ruda Valji Solanki reckons he has given golf lessons to over 10,000 aspiring players at the Willingdon Sports Club in Mumbai over the last 50 years. The irony is he has never taken a lesson himself.
“I used to watch a lot of members and see how they played and that’s how I learned to play,” Ruda said. “How do they grip the club, how do they swing. Nobody taught me. I taught myself.”
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Ruda, who will turn 83 this June, is still teaching, though now he mainly participates in coaching clinics for junior golfers at the club three or four times a week. His has been a golfing life in every sense.
It began as a 12-year-old, when he was an aage-walla at the club whose job was to walk ahead of a playing group (hence aage-walla) and keep an eye on where their golf balls landed. A natural left-hander, a member gave him two clubs with wooden shafts – a five iron and a seven iron – and he began to play.
Unfortunately, both clubs broke two years later and there was no golf for another two years. That’s when three-time All-India Amateur Champion RK Pitamber came to the rescue. He gave the then 16-year old Ruda a set of steel-shafted Ben Sears clubs. Only this time they were right-handed clubs.
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“For a few days I played very badly because I had to switch from leftie to rightie,” Ruda said. “But I slowly got better (to this day, Ruda can play both left-handed and right-handed).
As he got better, he began to play in the annual Members vs Caddies match. “I would always play Pitamber. Sometimes he would win. Sometimes I would win.”
Soon enough the club sent Ruda to play in the DUNLOP All-India Caddies golf championship and he started travelling all over the country – to Calcutta and Delhi; to Madras and Bangalore, places he had never dreamed he would see. The club would pay his expenses and provide golf balls (Ruda said Pitamber would also give him golf balls – “he was a good man”).
First prize in these tournaments back then was Rs 500 so playing wasn’t enough to make to make ends meet. The club secretary at the time was SG Pick, an Englishman, and he had Ruda made an official club caddie – there were only about 50 at the time – so he would have a steady income.
Golf was a mainly colonial sport back then, so when Ruda got married a few years later, he had to explain to his wife what golf was.
“We lived next to the club. I showed her over the wall. She had never heard of the game. “
In 1969, India were invited to participate in the World Cup of Golf for the first time. The tournament was being held in Singapore and because of his sixth place finish in the Indian Open that year, Ruda was selected along with Shadi Lad, who had finished fifth, to represent their country.
Ruda would shoot 74, 76, 79 and 76 for a four-round total of 305. Lad would pip him by a shot as India finished in a tie for 31s with Italy (out of 44 countries). The winner that year was the United States, represented by Major champions Leo Trevino and Orville Moody.
However, Ruda had to pay with a handicap. All his golfing life he had played barefoot. “I had played barefoot even in Gulmarg in Kashmir,” he said. “I had never worn golf shoes”
Surendra Lal, the team manager, who was affectionately known as Bandy (he is the father of Indian golf professional Nonita Lal Qureshi), insisted that Ruda wear shoes because it was an international event in a foreign country.
“Bandy said ‘Ruda, if you don’t wear shoes, India’s name will be tarnished. However, you play, it doesn’t matter. You must wear them.’
“So I played [in shoes] but my feet started to bleed and I was not able to play properly.”
Once his playing career began to wind down, a member suggested to Ruda that he should go into teaching and the committee agreed to make him a teaching professional at the club. It wasn’t an easy transition initially.
“I was scared the members would tell me I don’t know anything or get angry and ask me why I said this and not that. But then I steeled myself and got tougher and started to speak without fear.
“Grip the club like this. Turn your hips. Transfer your weight.
“Then it became a habit.”
It is habit that continues to this day as Ruda imparts a lifetime of golf wisdom to yet another generation of Mumbai golfers (full disclosure: he taught me how to play golf).
He never imagined that all this would happen to him when he first picked up a club over 70 years ago but he has loved practically every minute of it.
“I really enjoyed the challenge of golf,” he said. Golf is a game of the mind. You have to stay cool. If you get angry, you are finished.
“I have had a lot of fun playing golf.”
