My visit to the Bhubaneshwar Golf Club

Bhubaneshwar is another fast growing Teir-2 city of India. Located in Orissa, this city truly is a  shining examples of well planned infrastructure and growth. This city is poised to explode, the infrastructure is truly spectacular, with most major roads in the city upgraded to a dual carriage way. Traffic is orderly and free flowing due to the more accommodating wider roads. Currently the city is adding numerous flyovers to ease the traffic further. It is not surprising to see that many companies are choosing to setup here. Already Wipro and Infosys have large campuses in the city and many more IT giants are sure to follow.

Over the years the city added sporting facilities to balance out the heavy investment into infrastructure. It is not surprising that out of this the Bhubaneswar Golf Club was born. The story of this club is fascinating. It was founded in the 80’s by enterprising and enthusiastic golfers of Bhubaneswar. The first location of the golf course was around the runway of the Bhubaneswar airport, because the land became available and hardly any flights arrived at Bhubaneswar in those days. However as the city grew it was no longer feasible to be located at a place where ‘movable obstructions’ were planes…! so the club decided to find a more permanent address.

The course has 9 greens that can be repeated from a different set of tees to provide the golfer with 18 holes. The course was designed and built by the same group of golfers at the new location away from the city. The holes have some blind tee shots and some long par 4 that make for an enjoyable round of golf overall. The grass is a local variety chosen to withstand the harsh summers. The greens are hard and severely pitch marked which make putting a very irritating affair. All in all the average golfer can have an enjoyable round and that is the broad aim of the promoters of the golf club.

Though this is not a complete 18 hole golf course it is still quite popular with the players from the city. Its location is a drawback; almost 20 km away from the city center. There are talks on to try and extend the golf course to 18 holes so that it will be on par with other urban golf facilities in the country. I thought this small 9-hole golf course is ideal for such smaller cities, as it not only takes up less space, but also can be used effectively to train and build interest in the game.

It is my hope that more tier 2 cities can follow this pattern and build more 9-hole courses. These are easy to setup with less land requirement reducing the cost of development. This can allow many more government agencies and sporting authorities to consider establishing golfing facilities as part of their sport development programs. In the future 9 hole golf courses will become the most cost effective way for the sport to develop in India.