Indians are passionate about golf, but that has rarely meant great success on either the European or PGA Tours, as evidenced by the numbers behind Anirban Lahiri’s victory at the Maybank Malaysian Open on Sunday.
Consider, if you were to construct a “Mount Rushmore” of Indian Euro Tour winners, Lahiri would take up the fourth spot, since he’s just the fourth Indian to win on the tour, following Jeev Milkha Singh, Arjun Atwal, and SSP Chowrasia.
Here’s a quick look at the rest of the Indian greats of professional golf.
Jeev Milkha Singh: Singh, who turned pro in 1993, has 20 career wins, including four on the European Tour, the most by an Indian player. He finished seventh at the Euro Tour’s qualifying school in 1997, and in 2006 won the Volvo China Open, only the second Indian player to win a Euro Tour event. He became the first Indian to make the Top 50 of the Official World Golf Rankings, doing so in 2007. In 2008, he finished tied for ninth at the PGA Championship.
Arjun Atwal: Atwal is the first Indian man to win a European Tour event and the first to win a PGA event. He was also the first Indian man to win a $1 million cash prize, which he did at the Hero Honda Masters in 2003. His first European Tour victory was at the Caltext Singapore Masters in 2002, and he won the Carlsberg Malaysian Open in 2003. That same year, he earned his PGA Tour card through qualifying school, but would not get his first PGA win until 2011, when he won the Wyndham Championship. He is a neighbor and practice partner of Tiger Woods in Florida.
Shiv Shankar Prasad (SSP) Chowrasia: Chowrasia is a two-time Euro Tour winner. His father was the greenskeeper at the Royal Calcutta Golf Club in Kolkata, India, and Chowrasia started playing there at age 10. He won the 2008 Emaar-MGF Indian Masters and the 2011 Avantha Masters.
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