KATHMANDU, March 8: When Shiva Ram Shrestha was 12-years old, his favorite pursuit was lingering outside the sprawling golf course near Kathmandu’s international airport. He would stay there for hours waiting for golfers on the green of the Royal Nepal Golf Club (RNGC) to overshoot the balls. When a ball would cross the boundary, he would rush to grab it. [break]
He would then usually move on to the rough, barren fields near the golf course. There he would take the club he had fashioned from a tree branch and practice shooting the balls into crude holes made on the fields.
“At that time, golf was my passion. And I was laser-focused on learning the game,” said Shrestha, now 24 and Nepal’s top golfer.
But coming from a lower middle-class family with his father’s single earning only just enough to feed his family, Shrestha could not conceive of buying a real golf set like golfers of the comfortable class. Neither could he visit posh driving ranges or green courses to practice his swings and shots. And nor could he think of hiring an instructor to tell him whether his grip was too tight or his legs spread far too apart.
“There were times when my parents used to say ‘forget it and concentrate on your studies’,” Shrestha, a primary school dropout, said. “The game was considered good only for the rich.”
But he didn’t listen. Instead, he began to exploit the few advantages he did have; the location of his house and his father’s job. Shrestha still lives right outside the RNGC, where his father, now around 50, still works as a gardener.
In those days, he would frequently accompany his father to work just to watch the game. But even the times his father was not around, Shrestha would run up to the course, where he would stand all day imitating the postures and styles of the golfers. He would then implement those tricks with his tree-branch clubs on the rough fields near his house.
“But playing on those fields was not always a pleasant experience,” Shrestha quipped. “At times, the balls used to break the windows of our neighbors and we had to be on the run for a few days until house-owner cooled down.”
Finding a ball was also a troublesome job. “We had to rummage through the bushes to find the balls that had rolled or flown off the greens,” Shrestha said. He was once so desperate he even picked up a ball being used in game and walked away with it. “Luckily on that morning, the fairway was under the shroud of a fog and nobody noticed what I did,” Shrestha said, a sly smile on his face.
Shrestha later took on the back-breaking job of a ball boy, requiring him to find the balls that had rolled off the green and earning him 20-30 rupees after each 18-hole game.
But more than the money, his presence on the course opened doors for Shrestha to establish relations with players. “This was when I started opening my mouth to ask for their clubs to practice shooting balls on a real course,” he said. This went on for around three years until he applied to be a caddie.
A day after he successfully joined the job as a caddie, he took part in a caddie golf tournament, which the RNGC organizes every year. He finished “17th or 18th” and earned “700 rupees or 800 rupees.” This marked not only the first tournament he had appeared in, but also the first cash prize he had won in his life, “which made me think I can make money playing this game if I improved my skills,” Shrestha said.
Although Shrestha started playing golf out of sheer interest, he gradually came to learn he needed money to feel more secure in life. And since he had stopped going to school after grade four and put his entire focus on golf, he knew very well there was no other way for him to earn money than from the sport he had fallen in love with.
“That was when I thought I’d be a professional golfer some day,” an ambitious Shrestha said. Soon another caddie tournament came up. He not only won the tournament and the cash prize of 8,000 rupees, but was also able to attract the attention of some important RNGC figures.
“I don’t know what they saw in me, but they said they were struck by my potential,” said Shrestha. He was 17 at that time. “They then took me to play in the Bangladesh Amateur Open,” Shrestha said.
After Bangladesh, Shrestha participated in several other amateur tournaments in Bhutan, India and Pakistan. In the last few years he has visited countries such as India and Thailand, and is undergoing training to fine-tune his skills. He is currently under the tutelage of an American instructor, who teaches him the technical side of good golfing, as well as giving him tips on course etiquette and other matters relating to the game.
Shrestha has come a long way since his austere, or rather mischievous, beginnings. Last year, the year became a pro, he won four of six professional domestic golf tournaments, becoming the top golfer in the country. Earlier this year, he finished second in the Aircel Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI) qualifiers, a rare achievement for a Nepali golfer. He is now preparing for the Asian Tour to be held in Thailand next year, where he will be swatting balls alongside Asia’s top professional golfers.
Shrestha is already tipped to be the next big thing in Nepali golf. He has good height and physique, and is very good at delivering long shots; qualities considered essential to succeed, especially in Asian courses.
His fellow golfers say his confidence is his biggest asset. “He was a very good player from an early age. But now, because of his exposure to international tournaments and rigorous training in India and Thailand, he does not get nervous while putting the balls in crucial moments,” DT Sherpa, general secretary of the RNGC, who has known Shrestha for almost two decades, told myrepublica.com. “If he continues to maintain this poise, I’m sure he will make Nepal very proud one day.”
For Shrestha, life has been “good so far.” He practices his favorite game eight hours a day, every day. It also earns him quite a chunk these days, at least 500,000 to 600,000 rupees a year from tournaments alone. Last year, he received a total of Rs 600,000 from sponsors such as Chaudhary Group, KIA Motors and Yeti Airlines, which he spent on overseas training.
But sometimes he regrets not continuing his studies.
“It usually strikes me when I’m not able to communicate properly in English while playing matches abroad,” he said. “But if I had continued going to school I wouldn’t have become a professional golfer. I think I made the right choice.”
rupak@myrepublica.com
