Roundglass Golf Academy Uncovered: Mentorship, Talent & Growth | Part – 1

Part 1 of our roundtable discussion with Shubhankar Sharma, Jesse Grewal & Col Mohan Sharma on Roundglass Golf Academy’s vision for Indian golf! ⛳💚
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[Music] [Music] Uh yeah, I think so. This is the first time in front of a camera. Even though we’ve had many conversations together for over 15 years, many arguments, many discussions, every every discussion has been fruitful. Uh but yeah, first time in front of the camera. Yeah, I think it’s the first time in front of the camera. Okay, I’ll give you three words. You have to give me whatever comes to your mind first. Um, each each of you can answer. Golf, talent, fashion, the best game in the world. Chandigar kind of home of golf, junior golf in India. I’d say best city in India. I would say best sporting city in India and definitely in golf. It’s got passion to develop Punjab, develop sport and um environment and everything else. So I think it’s a lot of commitment to a good cause. Yeah. Similar to sir they are pioneering sporting efforts especially in Punjab and uh you know Sunonnys’s vision is incredible and we need more of those things in in India. Yeah it’s a I think it’s a the best form of give back by someone who succeeded at Mr. Sunonny has so I don’t think there’s a better example in India in sports. All right so I’ll do one thing I’ll combine all these three words. Ramla’s golf academy which is just starting in Chhattiar of Punjab. Any thoughts starting with sir? You know in the terms of infrastructure we’ve been always short in Chandigar. I mean we produce a lot of talent but we never had the best infrastructure for golf. I mean we had average this thing. So if round glass is going to help the our our people here to get into better infrastructure. We’ve got we’ve got to we’ve created a group of kids who will be coached from now onwards and it might widen a good academy a good place to practice a good if a if it can ever happen a better golf course is something which will really benefit the people from Chadigar and from India if it happens around here. Yeah. Um I mean I’ve been coming to Chandigar. First time I came to coach with ser was in 2007. Um and it’s been a long time since then and I’ve been traveling a lot. uh uh you know playing on the European tour, Asian tours and I see some great academies all over the world uh and I see the talent in India there’s so much talent uh so many kids who are picking up the sport that’s why you know like we mentioned in the podcast Chandigar is one of the best sporting cities in India especially for golf it’s incredible travel distances are so short academy like the round glass academy as in when it comes up it’ll be you know it’ll be a game changer especially not only in Chundigar but I think in north India having a facility like this cuz I I have seen the best facilities in the world and you know with our youth power and the young kids that are picking up golf a facility like that will change everything you know we want something where kids can practice here and go and play anywhere in the world I mean you know sir would agree and dad would agree as well I mean that’s one of the things that even for me I have to go out and practice as much as possible even though my coaches are here we try and travel abroad to go and practice but having a facility like that uh would force me to come back home even more I mean I love coming back home but a lot of the times I have stay out to practice. Uh but the vision with the round glass academy is going to change everything. I mean not only chundigar I think all over India kids will come and play a lot here. Yeah. No you said you said golf chigar and round glass. So I think golf was always there in Chundigar. What was missing was round glass and the round glass coming to Chundigar will complete the golf. No round glass as a concept you know the concept is to give back to the country. Sunonny in that way has been a great patriot that he went out make it big made it really big and he wanted to come back to India and he wanted to come to India in a in a field where there’s lot of passion there is a lot of talent there is a lot of people hungry to do that I mean if I remember my school college days only thing in the mind was that how much games I can play how many games I can go and participate I was part of maybe seven eight teams in my in my college and uh you know but reach nowhere and cricket was the only thing which I played for the or maybe handball stuff point is and then beyond that it was nothing and now if I look back had he gone to win national also it would have meant nothing so with uh with sun coming in I think he has a global vision he thinks that now he knows what what it takes to be a sportsman and that is why his vision is to get Olympic medal for India so when he’s aiming for Olympics he exactly know what he’s doing he’s he’s a global personality he knows he’s seen the world he’s done that and been there so I think golf and uh you suddenly coming into golf and taking it on. I think there nothing would have been better than that. What do you think uh that this opportunity serve for the kids who are gearing up who wants to get into? So I mean one is that as the academy will develop they will be exposed to the best infrastructure you can get. They’ll have technology they’ll have a complete system around them. You you have you have from fitness to equipment to good short game facilities, good putting facilities. hopefully a good area to play in. Apart from just the range itself, you have a constant coaching process, right? And over some time you can get we can get sort of as the academy develops we can get the best in the world in certain fields or specialists somebody who specialists in club fitting somebody specialist in short game of coming and giving kind of seminars or exposing to them with the best methods in the world are you know at the moment I’m doing most the job but I try to train myself also in in each part but we have specialists in every in in every field in golf and we should be able to get all that happening under under the round glass roof at the academy. So that’ll be something special. The kids will get exposed to all that. I mean at at when we when he Shbanka was young, I mean we sort of I’ve worked with him for all these years. But if you look at things like when he got onto tour short game and putting was something which was just from the normal skill and over the years we’ve tried to develop that to an international level to be able to play on different grasses and things like that and it’s still work in progress and you can imagine that if that happens to a kid early in their life it will become so much easier for them. So it’s taken a long time for him to get used to European conditions to understand short game in different countries which he’s traveling. It’s Asia is completely different. Europe is completely different. So if we have an academy and it has all the kind of grasses we need and have stuff like that, it will really make life very easy for any upcoming golf. No, absolutely. And rightly mentioned by you learning cuz I mean golf is a sport that you are learning all the time. I mean sir and I had a session in the morning and we are working on the same things we worked 10 years ago. Uh and you have to like keep reinforcing the same thing. It’s like you’re revising revising revising before an exam. Um but a lot of the times in golf it’s a very special sport is that our field changes every week. You know like in tennis there’s hardcore, clay and grass. We have grass and we have different types of grass all across the board. So you know when we playing in Europe it’s very different. It’s very packed. The sand is different. the soil is different. So the way the club reacts and interacts with the ground is very different as opposed to when you’re playing in Asia or you know when you’re playing in America sometimes the grass is much thicker. So you need different techniques and adaptability is the key in professional golf and you know all your life you train train to go and perform at the right level uh when it matters. Um so you know when I was growing up also sir and I like he said we work a lot on short game on putting um most important part in golf is the short game but as I went out and ventured out it was only tougher for me to adapt very very quickly. It took me years to understand technique cuz they were alien conditions. It was like you know going and playing in 4° in England. First you battling the weather, you’re battling the ground conditions everything’s very different. And now with the academy when it comes up the idea especi I love the idea cuz I remember having this chat with Sunonny sir and you know understanding what his vision was and I got really excited cuz I was like if we have a facility like this especially for kids coming up now even for me I mean I still want to think that I’m quite young um and golf is a sport where you know if you’re fit you can play till 50. So I would say my main part of my career is still in front of me. But when I look at 10 year olds, 12 year olds who come and practice every day at CGA, I think about them and I and I think if if they have the same facilities that a kid in probably in the UK or in America has right now, uh with all the talent and especially the hunger that you know kids in India have, it could be absolutely gamechanging. I mean having that same facility here, they would be ready products when they go out. It would not take them so much time to get used to conditions as you know for me or even previous players before me so many great players from Chandigar who have gone out and played it would make the process much shorter and much easier and you would see more and more players coming out of here sir you’ve been playing for almost three decades now three decades plus how do you think the setup has been in India versus now and versus the future what it is for us see I guess in three and a half decades I’ve taught even I have evolved D a lot over time right we’ve been exposed to different stuff and traveling also now every every travel I do you learn something more so that’s something which is carrying on so I can’t really so it was also like he says it was very basic uh work in the beginning the first first first decade of mine was basically training juniors I did a lot of stuff at the golf club itself CJ was not there at that time and I just enjoyed teaching juniors I chose to ch to work with juniors at that time Then um it happened that an Italian coach who used to visit India was around and I sort of approached him and then we got into understand technology to some extent. So that’s around the year 2000. So from 1990 I was teaching and was just working with juniors but basic skill knowing what was basically to make them it was more coaching than swing training if you put it that way was trying to make them better players and make them not do the major wrong things. Then I think from 2000 onwards I’ve got into technology got got trained started working going outside trying to get more information and now more of that stuff’s coming in because now there’s a there’s there’s stuff which is happening in putting there’s stuff which is happening in short game there’s so much information out there and now the question is how to be able to use that information because you know you have a lot of people knowing there’s a lot of analysis going on but fixing it is is another story altogether you can go and get an X-ray and you or or a scan and you know something is wrong but the doctor has to treat you and fix you. So that’s something which is now more important and I see I see it’s going in a kind of a dangerous way in a way that technology is going very fast now and we have people who are teaching on trackman a lot of coaches have now just started looking at trackman figures and telling something I think in another 2 years AI will tell them they’ll probably lose their job the trackman will give them the the numbers and the AI will tell them you can do this do this do that and you’ll be okay so I think being little old-fashioned coach of hearing seeing feeling is something which I’ve kept all this time and I think that’s an important thing which is which is from the early days of what I trained is still there with me because I don’t want to switch completely into tech and yet use tech to understand what is necessary today’s kids I see some kids practicing completely with tech and they their only feedback is what the machine’s telling them they should be able to be able to tell themselves also that this shot has gone this way because of this disease or whatever it is so Things have changed. It’s very easy for kids today. They have access to coaching. They have access to better ranges, better golf courses. In his time, it was a struggle. So, the adaptability to go outside and play was even tougher for him. Today, you can go to courses like DLF and and and Kalar and the kids are getting playing on better kind of golf courses. Earlier it was very average golf courses. So the game’s changed a lot and the kids have got now even if you look at the amount of money the parents are spending on kids is a lot more than was available at that time. [Music] [Music]