By Rahil Gangjee
Golf and cricket. Two sports played with sticks. But in India, one draws stadiums full of roaring fans, billion-dollar sponsorships, and political memes… while the other gets a polite nod and a quiet clap – if someone remembers it exists at all.
Let me clear something up: I love golf. I have made a career out of it. But if I had a rupee for every time someone asked me, “Why isn’t golf big in India?”, I’d be able to buy prime land in Delhi. For a putting green, of course!
This isn’t a rant. It’s a long putt aimed straight at the truth: golf in India has an image, access, and visibility problem. And cricket? Well, cricket nailed its marketing brief, wore flashy sunglasses, and casually walked away with the nation’s heart.
Let’s unpack this with some honesty (and a healthy dose of humour – because, hey, we golfers know how to laugh at a triple bogey when no one else does).
The image trap: Golf’s colonial hangover
To most people in India, golf still feels like an elite, English-speaking club activity – somewhere between bridge and lawn bowling. We have done a poor job shaking off that perception. When you say “golf” in a chai shop conversation, someone will either assume you are retired or rich. Or both. That’s because the game is still largely tucked inside cantonment zones and gated communities. With around 300 golf courses in the country – almost half managed by the armed forces – public access is minimal. If you are not from a certain background, you may not even know where the nearest course is, let alone be allowed to walk in with your Decathlon starter set.
Meanwhile, cricket is as grassroots as it gets. One bat, one ball, one borrowed slipper for a stump – and you’ve got a Test match happening in your gully. That’s how a sport builds culture. That’s how it earns a billion fans.
Cricket’s gameplan: A masterstroke in marketing
Cricket didn’t just get lucky. The folks behind it played the long game – and they played it well. The BCCI created a rockstar pipeline: junior programs, coaching camps, local tournaments, and most importantly, visibility. Kids saw themselves in the game. And the IPL? That was the final boss level. A shiny, glamorous, six-packed beast of a league that blended Bollywood, business, and brutal sixes.
The players became household names. Endorsements poured in. Cricket wasn’t just on TV—it was on shampoo bottles, fantasy apps, and prime-time ads. It’s hard to ignore a sport when the players are giving fitness tips during Diwali breaks and selling bank accounts and credit cards between overs.
Golf, on the other hand? Even when we win internationally, we get a line or two in the back pages—usually under the headline “Golfer shines abroad while you were watching IPL Highlights.”
What golf can (seriously) learn from cricket
Now I’m not saying we turn golf into a dance competition. I don’t expect tee-offs to be accompanied by DJ sets or glitter bombs (though, I wouldn’t mind a fog machine on the 18th green just once). But we can take a page out of cricket’s marketing playbook:
1. Accessibility is King
Let’s open up more “pay and play” courses. Let’s make it possible for kids to experience golf without needing club memberships or personal connections. Courses like Qutub Golf Course in Delhi or KGA in Bangalore are already showing the way. We need more of that. Golf shouldn’t feel like you are applying for a visa.
2. Start them young
Cricket has under-13 tournaments with TV coverage. Golf needs to build from the ground up—school-level putting competitions, inter-college leagues, golf simulators in malls. Let kids fall in love with the sound of a clean strike before they get distracted by online solaces.
3. Get loud (Digitally)
We golfers love our silence and etiquette. But the real world scrolls fast and taps quicker. We need better digital content—highlights, reels, behind-the-scenes. If chess can blow up on Twitch, trust me, a dramatic playoff on the 18th green has all the makings of viral content. Someone just has to shoot it correctly.
4. Structured pathways
In India, cricket is a ladder. You play school-level, district-level, Ranji Trophy, Indian team, IPL… boom. Golf needs to create a structured, visible ladder. Right now, too many talented juniors get stuck due to lack of funding or direction. The sport shouldn’t rely on family budgets to fund dreams.
5. New formats = New fans
Golf can experiment too. Team-based 9-hole events, city-based leagues, pro-ams with a twist—anything that makes it more dynamic for new viewers. We don’t need to lose the tradition, but we do need to tweak the experience.
So, can golf ever be “big” in India?
Short answer? Yes.
Long answer? Yes, if we stop waiting for a miracle and start building an ecosystem. The raw talent is there. We have had players win on international tours including the mother of Tours -The PGA Tour. We have had top-10 finishes in big events. But unless the average young Indian sees a golfer on TV, hears about the sport in school, or scrolls past a relatable video, golf will remain an exotic cousin in India’s sports family.
That said, help has arrived—from an unlikely (but powerful) ally.
Believe it or not, a cricketer has come to golf’s rescue—wood and all. None other than 1983 World Cup-winning captain Kapil Dev, now the President of the Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI), is leading the charge. And he’s not alone. From MS Dhoni to Yuvraj Singh to Sachin Tendulkar—some of the biggest names in Indian cricket are swinging clubs and showing up at pro-ams, lending their superstar power to golf, just by playing it.
Their presence matters. When fans see their cricketing heroes treat golf as more than a post-retirement hobby, it makes the sport aspirational in a whole new way. Kapil paaji’s passion for golf is genuine, and as the face of Indian professional golf’s governing body, he’s not just attending dinners—he’s pushing the envelope too.
Golf may not have its own stadium chants yet, but with legends like him teeing it up, it just might find its way into more Indian living rooms.
Final putt: Find golf’s inner IPL
Golf won’t be cricket. And it doesn’t have to be. But it can learn how to entertain, how to connect, and how to grow a community. Golf is calm, precise, poetic, and wildly frustrating—which is also what makes it addictive.
And maybe, just maybe, the next big Indian sports star isn’t smashing sixes. Maybe they’re reading the wind, lining up a nervy five-footer, and draining it like a boss. They just need someone to believe in them—and maybe a little help from a marketing team that knows how to dream big.
Rahil Gangjee is a professional golfer, sharing through this column what life on a golf course is like.
