Sportstar·India·Friday, November 6, 2026 at 03:42 AM UTC

The gold at the end of the fairway: How Pranavi Urs made it big in golf

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Jonathan Selvaraj

It took Pranavi Urs a while to realise she had made history after draining her final putt at Kasugai Country Club in Aichi last month. Her playing partner, Singapore’s Shannon Tan, had to tell her she had just won gold in the women’s golf event at the Asian Games, making her the first Indian woman to do so. Even after that, there was no theatrics or dramatic release of emotion. “There were so many people watching on TV back in India. Come to think of it, I should have at least given a fist bump or something,” she tells Sportstar.

The 23-year-old has had more time to reflect on her accomplishment. She has even played another tournament on the Ladies European Tour (LET), the Hero Women’s Indian Open, where she finished tied fourth.

Back in Aichi, however, the enormity of what she had done did not immediately strike her. She went for doping control and returned to a phone that had grown hot with messages. There were calls and interviews to get through, and a flight to catch. “I didn’t really have time to process what had just happened. At least right away, it didn’t really sink in,” she tells Sportstar.

There was, however, something fitting about the way Pranavi won her gold medal. The absence of a grand celebration was entirely in character. “I’ve never been one who is playing golf because I want to win medals or anything. I’m playing because I enjoy it. I think I’m probably the most chill person you’ll ever meet on a golf course. If I win, that’s great. If I don’t, that’s also OK,” she says.

Off the course, however, Pranavi is rather less understated.

There is a diamond embedded in her upper incisor. She has tattoos, multiple piercings and a fondness for jewellery that includes an emerald choker, rings and a bracelet chosen to match her earrings. She likes to coordinate her golf outfits with her accessories, right down to the little markers she uses on the greens. She is, by her own admission, a shopaholic. After her win in Aichi, she headed to the city’s shopping district and purchased a blue Fendi bag. “I felt I deserved one!” she says.

The gemstone that sparkles when she smiles has been there for six years. She had assumed it might be a passing phase when she got it, but it has outlasted plenty of trends.

It has also attracted attention beyond golf. At a meeting with the Prime Minister last month, a few Indian cricketers noticed it and told her they wanted to get something similar.

“I said, ‘You better tag me and give me the credit,’” she recalls. “Because then people will think they started it. But people need to know that I pioneered it,” she laughs.

Pranavi is comfortable with her individuality and sees no reason to separate her interests outside golf from who she is. She enjoys the sport, but she also enjoys being a young woman with her own tastes, whims and ways of spending her money.

“It’s just not about golf,” she says. “I like all the girly stuff as well.”

Her tattoos reflect a mix of impulse, private jokes and personal reminders. One, a lightning bolt on her left wrist, has no grand explanation. She got it because she liked the way it looked. She wishes she had a better story to tell about it, but she does not. For her, that seems story enough.

There is a smiley-face emoji on her right wrist, just above the spot where she suffered a fracture from overtraining. It serves as a reminder, she says, to keep smiling even when things are not going her way.

Another tattoo, an arrow on her middle finger, has a story behind it. She earned it through a bet with her mother. Pranavi told her that if she finished first on the Order of Merit (a seasonal ranking system), she would get a tattoo. Her mother agreed but stipulated that it could be on any finger except the middle one.

She insisted on the middle finger.

The arrow, Pranavi explains, represents moving forward. She got it on the middle finger precisely because it is the longest. “Everyone else can chase you, but no one can beat you,” she says.

Pranavi Urs became the first Indian woman to win individual gold at the Asian Games, while also claiming India’s first-ever women’s team medal in golf at the Asiad, alongside Aditi and Diksha Dagar.

Pranavi has been ahead of the field for a long time. She was just five and a half years old when she first picked up a golf club in Mysuru.

It was partly her parents’ idea. “They just wanted me to get up and moving by 6 a.m. rather than spend the morning lazing around,” she says.

There was another attraction. The golf course at Mysuru Golf Club is situated partly inside the Mysuru Race Course. Pranavi loves horses. “I honestly started to play golf because I thought I could see the horses run in the morning,” she says.

The horses remain an interest. When she is back home and has the chance, she still goes to watch the racing. “I don’t bet on them, but I just like watching them run,” she says.

Before long, golf began to come naturally to her. She won her first tournament when she was seven, a South Zone age-group event. “I won the tournament without knowing anything about golf. I just went and hit the ball. It was fun,” she says.

Soon, the sport became more than a way to spend a morning. As a junior, she played against boys on the same tour and relished beating them. A few of them eventually quit, she recalls, partly because of her. The competition was fun, and so was everything around it: the travelling, the friendships and the group of children who played golf together and then did other things in the holiday towns of Ooty and Wellington, where these tournaments were usually held.

There were sacrifices, of course. Golf meant missing birthdays and other occasions. But she had friends on the circuit, and the sport offered a social life as well as a competitive one. It was not simply a child and her parents travelling from tournament to tournament. She enjoyed playing, and she enjoyed winning, too.

“Golf has always been fun. I wouldn’t be playing if I wasn’t enjoying myself. But I also liked collecting those crystal cups that you got for winning a tournament. Every tournament had a different type of cup. I wanted to get as many of them,” she says.

At 13, she won a tournament organised by the Women’s Golf Association of India that included professional players. Three years later, she turned professional, just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The disruption to the circuit made it difficult to build momentum.

But even then, she knew she was going to make it. When a sponsor approached her soon after she turned professional, Pranavi turned the offer down.

“They wanted to put their logo on my shirt pocket. But I wanted to keep that space for the Hero logo because all of the best players in golf, Shiv Kapur and Sharmila Nicollet, had a Hero logo there. That’s who I wanted to be like. And I got that sponsorship in six months anyway!” she says.

In 2022, she won five of 11 events and topped the Order of Merit, helping her earn a place on the Ladies European Tour (LET).

Competing on a tour that spanned several continents taught her lessons beyond golf. There was the standard of golf, naturally, but also the travel, the changing time zones and the demands of living out of a suitcase. One week could lead straight into another, with little time to recover before the next tournament.

Earlier this year, she spent 10 weeks on the move, travelling between Australia, Las Vegas and South Africa, among other stops. The physical demands were considerable. So were the emotional ones.

That is one reason she values the support of her partner, fellow professional golfer Karandeep Kochhar. “He genuinely understands the frustrations of the game and the difficulty of travelling and competing. He’s helped me so much over the last three years,” she says.

Their relationship comes with an obvious complication: they play the same sport. They have even played against each other, with Pranavi beating him at the Indian Golf Premier League (IGPL) Invitational in Mumbai last year, while Karandeep returned the favour a week later at IGPL Invitational UAE in Dubai.

She does not describe it as a source of tension. “If anything, having someone who understands the work makes it easier to talk about what has gone wrong, or why a tournament that looked promising has ended in disappointment,” she says.

Also in Pranavi’s corner are her parents. Her mother has travelled with her for much of her career, though less often since she joined the LET. She still makes the trip when her daughter needs her.

Their relationship has also weathered the occasional argument over tattoos. The middle-finger tattoo may have tested maternal patience, but it did not change the basic arrangement.

“I’ll set myself a target and work towards it, and afterwards I’ll decide how I get to celebrate when I get there,” she says.

She had promised herself a handbag if she won the Asian Games, but there was no guarantee that would happen. In the three years she has been on the LET, Pranavi’s best result had been a tied-third-place finish at the Dormy Open Helsingborgin.

The field in Aichi included former world No. 1 Yin Ruoning of China, LET Order of Merit winner Shannon Tan and Taiwan’s Yani Tseng, a 15-time winner on the LPGA Tour. Pranavi’s teammate Aditi Ashok had won silver at the previous Asian Games and finished fourth at the Tokyo Olympics.

Pranavi, however, believed her results would eventually turn.

“I didn’t come to Japan thinking I didn’t have a chance. I knew I had played well in the past, but it was a matter of putting in four good days together. I knew I just had to be patient and that it was a matter of time before I was able to put those four days together. I knew a big result was coming around. I think I peaked at the right time,” she says.

Even when her round threatened to unravel, she refused to let one bad hole define it.

Having led heading into the final day of the competition, Pranavi’s last round was not without drama. She made a triple bogey and found herself in a position that might have unsettled a less relaxed player. There was no undoing the mistake, but she refused to dwell on it. “It’s fine, it’s done. You can’t undo what’s done,” she said of the triple bogey. The immediate task was to get out of trouble, finish the hole and move on.

Early gains: In 2022, Pranavi won five of 11 events and topped the Order of Merit, helping her earn a place on the Ladies European Tour (LET).

Early gains: In 2022, Pranavi won five of 11 events and topped the Order of Merit, helping her earn a place on the Ladies European Tour (LET). | Photo Credit: LET

Rather than worry about the result, she focused on the next shot, then the one after that. After the triple bogey, she decided the worst was behind her. She could afford to be aggressive again.

Pranavi has spoken of being the most relaxed person on the course, but that is not the same as being indifferent.

“I know how much a tournament win matters, but I don’t want the desire to win to become a burden that impacts every decision I make on the course,” she says.

For the last few years, Pranavi has been working with a sports psychologist and has learned to prepare for difficult moments rather than assume that a good round will remain good. “Before the last round, I actually visualised a moment where I made a double bogey, and then I tried to think what I’d do to get out of that situation. So when it actually happened, I was ready for it,” she says. Even after that hole, Pranavi says she never really had to reset herself. “Later on I came to know that there were people who were panicking at that point. But that’s on them. It really wasn’t a problem for me,” she says.

Pranavi realised she had been in the zone when she reflected on everything happening beyond her shots. “I was chatting and making jokes with my caddies and the other players, and that’s something I only do when I’m really locked in. That means I’m really not thinking of what I need to do on the course. I already know it,” she says.

The Asian Games gold medal is the biggest prize of Pranavi’s career so far. It has also given her a platform she did not have before, bringing her game to people who might never otherwise watch a golf tournament. She was struck by the number of people who woke early to follow her round, including those who knew little about the sport. With that visibility come greater expectations and pressure, but Pranavi does not see them as a burden.

She believes that visibility matters, particularly for young golfers who do not come from the usual circles associated with the game. Golf can appear inaccessible, an expensive pursuit reserved for a small group of people. She wants more children, including girls from small towns and villages, to see it as something they can try.

The medal might also encourage companies to support junior golfers who cannot afford to pursue the sport without help. Pranavi is aware that she has had financial support from her parents, that her father is a successful businessman, and that this has made parts of her career easier. She does not pretend that every golfer starts from the same place. But she also does not believe that financial privilege removes the difficulty of competing.

“You still have to go out there and play,” she says.

She has seen how much difference opportunity can make. Greater exposure to international golf helps young players understand the standard required to compete at the highest level. And if they can see an Indian golfer win an Asian Games gold medal, perhaps the sport will feel a little less remote.

Her ambitions remain firmly on the course: she wants to make it to the LPGA Tour and, eventually, the Olympics. The Asian Games result has given her confidence that she can put four good rounds together, but she does not want to turn it into a new source of pressure. She will continue playing on the LET, working on her game and trying to improve.

For now, she is content to keep things simple: focus on the next tournament, work towards her next target and decide what to buy if she achieves it. There may be another tattoo somewhere down the line, too.

“All that’s for the future. Right now, I just want to enjoy myself and have fun on the course. As long as I’m able to do that, the results will take care of themselves,” she says.

Published on Nov 06, 2026

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