Kohlapur: Golfs Next Frontier

A Typical Fairway

Kohlapur is a small town on the border of Maharashtra and Karnataka, approximately 9.5 hours drive from Bangalore. This town interestingly sells the largest number of Mercedes Benz cars in the whole of India. The economy of this town is linked to sugar, with a large number of factories, and sugar cane plantations located in this region. This area has also benefitted from a majority of Mumbaikars who want to move away from the crowded city of Mumbai. Kohlapur is steeped in history as this city was the seat of the Maratha Empire. To this day the palace still exists; however, it is not as elaborate as the palace of the Mysore maharaja; but is still a very prominent site to visit.

For such a wealthy city that features many of India’s HNIs (High Net-Worth Individuals), there is only one golf course; the EPTA Kohlapur. This is an army golf course, and features Browns (not greens). The fairways too, are very rocky and feature sparse amounts of grass. It appears that water is a concern and expensive, especially to keep a large area like a golf course alive and green. 

An Image of a Brown

The most interesting feature was the ‘browns’. They are created in the same manner as greens, i.e. a 3ft deep circular hole is made, it is laid with rocks, sand and brick for proper drainage, and the top layer is plaster made out of cow dung. Finally a layer of sand is added to provide some resistance to the ball. I believe this is a fascinating concept, and can in fact encourage golf in some of the most difficult terrain in the world! It is made more appealing because, if one wants to lay grass, all it requires is to remove the layer of plaster since the structure of the Brown is sound and conducive to grass growth. It also makes golf economical as one could create a golf course cheaply with browns, and as the profitability improves, add grass to the greens, rather than incur a very large up-front cost in the beginning which takes numerous years to recover.  This can allow golf to be created in the toughest conditions in the world, as it makes it proves a fallacy that you only need green grass to play golf.

See it to believe it 40 players!

Of course, before I get ahead of myself, whether or not people will want to play on a brown is questionable, but this whole concept has got me thinking, and has fired my imagination. What is the extent people will go to play the game? Even though this golf course only has browns there was still a tournament which had more than 40 people playing, on the day I visited!!! This really gives a new meaning to the phrase ‘avid golfer’.  I am intrigued by what I saw in Kohlapur, and will try to pursue this line thought. This can be a way, although extreme, of making golf affordable. Am I wrong in thinking that this could be a potential solution… what do you think?