Destined for high tee parties

It is not often that a president or the prime minister tweets for a player who finishes fourth Yet they did when Aditi Ashok missed the medal by a whisker at the Tokyo OlympicsEver since I started following golf it has not been a common manrsquos game It is not common stream It also has an unwanted tag of being the rich manrsquos sport and has had to grapple with the mindset of people who have often found it difficult to understandIt is also not common for a TV channel to show a full round of golf and thatrsquos what it did when World No 200 Aditi battled the likes of World No 1 Nelly Korda and many othersDespite two days of excellent play on first two days when she was in the Top3 Aditi did not figure in scheme of medalseekers And then after the third day the whole of India suddenly woke up to the possibility of a medalOf birdies and bogeysThat Saturday in the final round the lank and somewhat fraillooking girl from Bangalore had the entire nation enthralled with a sport that had terms like par birdies bogeys and roughs fairways greens and aprons These terms are alien to India but Aditi has taken a step to get Indians know more about itYet with a medal on the line the entire populace was willing to overlook its unfamiliarity with the sport to root for a girl ranked World No 200 battle against the World No 1 and others for a place on the podium Struck by COVID19 in MayJune Aditi who has been playing on the worldrsquos strongest golf tour since the beginning of 2017 but still garnered only a limited number of fans essentially golf lovers missed a lot of events in those monthsThat saw her ranking fall but the grit and talent was there for all to seeMum the caddieShe had a disarming smile to go with it and her mother Maheshwari the one of the two driving forcesmdashthe other being her dad Ashokmdashwas serving as the caddie for the week What better way to bond with a parent than combining to seek an Olympic Games medalThose compelling stories had a lot of Indians all over the world coming together on social media platforms and then there were others willing to sacrifice their morning sleep on a weekend to watch this fine young ladyHigh interestCommentators not familiar with the game or its terminologies and demands were searching for words even as Aditi found a way to battle with the world starsStrokes were called points which roughly translates to calling centuries by Virat Kohli as goals Yet the interest soared as the finish came closer In the end Aditi fell short of a medal by one shotmdashfinishes in golf are rarely by massive margins Even three shots is bigShe finished fourth as the current World No 1 Nelly Korda daughter of tennis Grand Slam winner Petr Korda took gold and Japanrsquos own Mone Inami World No 28 was second Former World No 1 Lydia Ko who had scaled the peak ranking when she was just 17 years and nine months old won bronzeYes Aditi fell short by one just as Milkha Singh did just as PT Usha did or Abhinav Bindra did in 2016 after winning gold in 2008 or the womenrsquos hockey team did this time Many others too fell at the doorstep of a podium But this time around the nation melted like never beforeThe final round of the Olympic womenrsquos golf was probably the most watched round in the history of Indian and probably Asian golf and maybe much fartherMillions were glued to their TV sets following the fortunes of Aditi who after three days was lying second and in line for an unprecedented medal at Olympic golfAditi 23 who represented India at the Rio Olympics had fraternity looking in awe after two days of great golf in 2016But by the end she finished T41 While golf fans still recall that performance others forgot her and her performances on the LPGA the worldrsquos toughest Tour often stayed in the column ldquoIn briefrdquoAditi was tied second after the third day and when news filtered in about a possible storm and cancellation of the final round a medalstarved India started looking at weather charts in and around TokyoOnline talking pointOne group on the platform lsquoTwitter Spacesrsquo had more than 140 people at one time discussing Indian golfParticipants included sportspersons from other sports like former Olympians Aparna Popat a former World Junior silver medallist in badminton table tennis star Neha Aggarwal and professional golfer S Chikkarangappa who last week was Lahirirsquos caddie in Tokyo They were joined by professional journalists and others who love golf and know about Aditirsquos talentEven after she ended fourth Twitter was agog with messages from the likes of Olympians like Abhinav Bindra Mahesh Bhupathi and many others who themselves know the pain of finishing fourthIn recent years golf has had more exposure than in the past and the exploits of Jeev Milkha Singh Anirban Lahiri Shubhankar Sharma Aditi Ashok Tvesa Malik andDiksha Dagar have found space in the print media but rarely on TV channels whose inclination to cricket iswelldocumentedA new eraYet on the first Saturday of August 2021 Aditi may have given the Indian sports fan a new sport to follow more keenly than ever before She may well have ushered in a new era for Indian womenrsquos golf Indian womenrsquos sport and maybe even Indian golf and sportThank you Aditi