india Letter #3 from Ron Fream

India is missing an opportunity.

The nation needs to re-brand and re-focus golf not as a private enclave of restricted access for the fortunate few but as a unique destination, one that offers memorable courses for both local golfers and international visitors, on a pay-and-play basis.

As Thailand has proved, easily accessible golf courses well-suited to tourists can attract more than a million visitors a year. The accompanying economic benefits are huge, and India desperately needs them.

International golf tour operators currently avoid India, due to a lack of suitable destinations. But some areas of India have great potential for tourist golf.

In particular, I'm thinking of northeastern India -- Sikkim, Assam, Maghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh, the eastern states that border the Himalayas. These states are full of wonderful old colonial-era, tea-garden and hill station courses that would be attractive to vacationing golfers, not to mention unique settings where stunning new courses could be built. The region's scenery, geography, architecture, history, climatic diversity, natural vegetation -- all offer a distinct contrast from the courses in the main metro areas of India.

And most importantly, in these areas land and water can be made available for golf without civil disruption.

Assam, for example, has about 20 ancient golf courses hidden among its tea garden estates, most of them hardly utilized. Some of these tea garden courses are more than 100 years old. Jorhat Gymkhana Golf Club dates its golf from 1876 and is second to Royal Calcutta Golf Club as the oldest course in the country. It's the fourth-oldest course outside the United Kingdom, after Royal Calcutta and two courses in New Zealand. Shillong Golf Course is also among the oldest, dating to 1878, and Digboi Golf Course traces its origins to 1888. Doomdooma Golf Club built its course in 1895.

Sadly, however, these courses aren't easily accessible today. But as India builds better roads and more airports, the Northeast's historic courses could be very attractive to foreign golfers seeking a one-of-a-kind experience.

Experience shows that demand will grow. Golf tourism can be a locomotive for local employment and social betterment.

Cheers!
Ron Fream

Ron Fream is the founder of GolfPlan, a Santa Rosa, California-based design firm. He's designed about 75 new courses, including one for the Sultan of Brunei, and he currently has projects in Mongolia, Uganda, and other countries. He lives in Malaysia.