Gaganjeet Bhullar (PTI Photo) SINGAPORE: Gaganjeet Bhullar was all smiles as he walked off the 18th green of the immaculate Serapong course with a birdie. Fairways found, tick, greens in regulation met, tick, putts converted, tick. It’s like a repeat of the first round on Friday… until the 14th and 15th where he bogeyed his first tournament.No problem. The 16th was the highlight of his day, with a nearly 30-35 foot downhill. And a closing birdie in the final ensured he added a 3-under 68 to his four-under 67 to stay in contention at the halfway stage of the $2m Singapore Open, just three shots off the leader in joint third.Bhullar’s position near the top of the leaderboard at the International Series event told a different story. The 11-time winner on the Asian Tour remains one of the last of his generation to consistently compete on the international stage. So the question remains: where is the next breakthrough golfer from India? The numbers are sobering. At the Hero Indian Open this March, only three Indian players made it to DLF. Months before that, at the DP World India Championship at DGC, only five advanced to the weekend rounds. These are tournaments played on home soil, in an environment that should favor local players. However, the gap between domestic promise and global success appears to be widening.Jeev Milkha Singh, who retired with back problems, believes that one should set high standards and be willing to work for them. “You have to believe that you don’t want to be the best in Asia, you have to believe that you want to be the best in the world. Belief, discipline, routine, process, it all goes together,” the 54-year-old said.Go out, challenge yourself, was Shiv Kapoor’s advice. The 44-year-old played a hole-in-one on Thursday to claim his first Asian Tour title as a rookie. He remembers climbing the traditional ladder from domestic circuits to Asian and European tours, but now sees a shift in mindset. Kapur recalls how at the beginning of his career he crossed the continents, gradually moving from the US to Australia, Malaysia to India. The physical toll was considerable, but so was the learning. “If you’re in your 20s,” he argues, “you should be traveling the world and taking advantage of opportunities.” What he detects now, he says, is a certain softness. “I just don’t see the hunger.”Bhullar, 37, joined. “We try to mentor a lot of young people, and on the domestic Tour you can grow and experiment, but the goal is somewhere abroad.”“Don’t think it’s because of a lack of facilities,” added Shiv, “We couldn’t get the equipment. We had very few golf courses. So all those things have improved. It’s just a matter of making the players feel good in the big tournaments.”Have Indian players found their comfort zone at home with the amount of prize money available at the PGTI and IGPL? It could be a double-edged sword. “Players can make a good living, that can be a good thing. That’s their goal. But I always wanted to be a world-beater,” Jeev said.SSP Chawrasia, the last Indian to win a national Open (2016, 2017), frames the issue more bluntly: “Maybe they think, ‘I’m making money and that’s good enough.’ But when we played, when we entered the Asian Tour, we always thought about putting ourselves in pressure situations and then only your best game surfaces come out.”Different paths from PGTI and IGPL provide opportunities but the next generation is struggling with the missing pieces in their minds and games at the international level. Bhullar believes fortunes will change. “These things happen in cycles. The next generation will be ready in the next four or five years. Kartik Singh can be a great player. Veer Ganapathy, a solid striker. It’s only a matter of time before these kids believe and start playing Q-Schools like us.”(The writer is in Singapore at the invitation of the International Series)Singapore Open Round 2: -10 Jeongwoo Ham (Kor) 64-68; -8 Jazz Janewattananon (Tha) 68-66; -7 Tomohiro Ishizaka (Japan) 67-68, Gaganjeet Bhullar 67-68 (-7); T-3;Other Indians making the cut (placed to one side): Pukhraj Singh Gill: 71-70 (-1); T-38; Karandeep Kochhar: 71-71 (E); T-43.
