May 20, 2014. Russi Mody’s contribution to golf has to be legendary in India. At a time the sport was looking for messiahs, Mody embraced it and turned it into a culture of sorts. There is one legendary story about Mody playing a whole round of golf with a single club – the putter!
In her column for the DNA Newspaper, Shaili Chopra points out that Mody “never confused hard work with ambition. He preferred consistency.” She quotes Firdose Vandrevala, who was formerly with the Tata Group and a youngster why Mody was spearheading Tata Steel. “He won a friendly golf tournament by using just one club through all 18 holes… The putter!” recalls Vandrevala in Chopra’s column. As someone who had met and got taken in by Mody’s personality Vandrevala remembers how he won over young and new joinees. “His pact with new joinees: there are 24 hours in a day, 8 hours is with you and nature. Rest your body and sleep well. You can overeat, drink (whatever!) but rest your body is a must. The balance 16 hours was split between him and us. 8 hours we must work with full passion and commitment and balance 8 hours he’ll make sure we have fun and enjoy,” shares Vandrevala with Chopra.
He was a great motivator. During a golf event every January Vandrevala recalls an incident where many of the new joinees at Tata Steel queued up to be ball spotters, fetching balls off the fairways. “We had to spot the ball and signal to the players. It was a silly job but because of the way Russi made it, it seemed to be a fun job,” remembers Vandrevala.
Besides taking the steel major to new heights, the Padma Bhushan recipient helped groom the steel city Jamshedpur into a sports hub. The Telegraph reports, “Steel City Golf, one of Eastern India’s premier amateur tournaments, was also Mody’s brainchild. He was known for starting super soccer that brought overseas clubs like Bochum Junior and Sao Paulo to play in the steel city. It was during his era that slogans like “We also make steel” and “Sports a way of life” were coined.”
Mody, who joined Tata Steel in 1939 as an office assistant and went on to become joint managing director in 1979 before retiring in 1993, was ailing for the past three years. He had stopped playing golf at the age of 86, and instead spent more time in card rooms playing bridge.
