As Delhi awaits golfing galaxy, Indian pros search for revival

New Delhi: A mid-October chill is beginning to descend on the Capital where some of the world’s finest golfers will generate heat on the Delhi Golf Course when they tee off in the $4 million DP World India Championship this week.

Six-time Major champion Rory McIlroy, who won his second Masters title this year, Aaron Rai, the British player of Indian origin who won the PGA Championship, New Zealand’s Open champion Ryan Fox, fellow Major winners Shane Lowry, Justin Rose, Patrick Reed – he also leads the Race to Dubai DP World rankings – and Bubba Watson will also be there.

England’s Tommy Fleetwood, who won last year’s inaugural tournament by two shots in a red-hot 2025, and Norway’s Viktor Hovland, both chasing their first Major, will also be there.

There will be 30 Indians in the field, yet it is hard to shake off that being-outside-and-looking-in feel about them, so long have the country’s golfers struggled at international level.

Shubhankar Sharma, twice winner on the European Tour (now DP World Tour), hasn’t found success since those magical two weeks across late 2017 and early 2018. Gaganjeet Bhullar is the last Indian man to win a European Tour event, but that too was in 2018. However, he had an Asian Tour win three years ago.

Although Shubhankar is ending another bleak DP World Tour season—he will need to return to Q-school to retain his card—the 30-year-old whose world ranking has plunged to 936 carries some confidence in the tournament after his six-shot win as an invitee in domestic tour PGTI’s Kapil Dev Invitational Tour Championship at the Jaypee Greens in Greater Noida.

Although Shubhankar is also comforted by the same type of grass being used on the DGC greens, it has been an ordeal to find a level where he once belonged. Yuvraj Sandhu, who earned a DP World Tour card as the 2025 PGTI Order of Merit winner, was 13th in the FedEx Open de France last month, but missed the cut in 12 of the 17 events he has played.

Anirban Lahiri is an invitee for the tournament. The last Indian on the PGA Tour raised high hopes of a breakthrough win after finishing second in the Players Championship in March, 2022. But months later he switched to the lucrative LIV Golf, and the momentum built on the PGA Tour was lost.

The Asian Games gold of Pranavi Urs has put Indian women’s golf in the spotlight, but the men struggle to find a headline. It is something as PGTI president, Kapil Dev acknowledges, despite the domestic tour finding more prizemoney, events and aligning its season with the DP World Tour.

“As an organisation we need to give a platform to the players. That is the best we can give them. The rest is entirely up to them,” Kapil said at the event named after him. “At the end of the day, when you get one gold medal, sponsors come. No sports can run without sponsors.”

PGTI CEO Amandeep Johl, the former pro who has been elected DGC captain, was blunt. While he blamed a lack of drive among the players, he said the parallel Indian Golf Premier League (IGPL) wasn’t helping.

“We can only take the camel to the water. You can’t make it drink,” he told HT on Sunday. “There is a total vacuum now. The ecosystem in the last 2-3 years is not helping. We must bring money in the right manner.

“If IGPL had joined up, we would have created a system, added international tournaments… Right now, we are burning money and looking stupid. I’m open to get together, we can’t have two tours.”

Among other issues, there were disagreements over IGPL’s financing before it launched in 2025.

So, what can make it a good week for Indian golfers? “At least half make the cut. That is what the dream is,” said Johl.