At
11 a.m. on March 12, George Philip George was at the Delhi Golf
Club. It was a bright and sunny day: blue skies, with an occasional
white cloud passing by. The US-based professional, who has his home
in Kochi, stood at the tee to take a shot. He decided to use a seven
iron because the distance was over 160 yards. “I wanted the ball
to land at 150 yards and let it roll on,” he says. There was a
slight breeze, from left to right.
As
George stood looking at the green, he noticed a large tree on one
side. “I knew it was imperative that I did not hit the tree,” he
says. George stood still. Then he swung the iron, and hit the ball
cleanly. “I saw the ball heading towards the tree, and thought, 'I
have goofed it',” he says. “But at the last moment, it curved
away and went in a straight line and landed on the edge of the
green.... and kept rolling.”
George
said, “No. It is impossible!” But the ball just rolled on and on
and, suddenly, it disappeared into the hole. The golfer and the
caddie jumped up, yelled at the top of their voices, and embraced
each other. For many golfers, it is a lifelong pursuit to score a
hole in one. For a non-professional the statistical ratio is 1 in
12,500 attempts.
“I
was shocked,” says George. “Shiv was even more excited. He had
been playing for years and had never scored a hole in one.”
Later,
the club president presented George with a hole-in-one trophy. What
was most remarkable was that George started playing golf only two
years ago. Before that, he played tennis and cricket. In fact, so
good was George at being a fast bowler that he was selected to play
for the United States cricket team.
“The
cool thing about American cricket is that people from different
countries come to play together,” he says. “So, in our team,
there were West Indians, Pakistanis, Indians and Sri Lankans.”
It
was a multi-cultural group and each player had his own style, which
he had developed by playing in his home country. For example, the
West Indian style is free and spirited, while the Pakistanis are
aggressive and natural players. "Like the Indians, they don’t
play textbook cricket,” he says.
George
played for the USA when it toured the West Indies for friendly
matches in the early 2000s.
But
now, in his forties, George was looking for a sport which did not
place too many physical demands on him. And, thanks to a friend, he
stumbled on to golf.
“Golf
is an obsession,” says George. “The right technique and constant
practice makes you a good player. You are also competing against
yourself. The calmer your mind, the better you play.”
George
believes strongly in the mind-body balance. “I work a lot and
anytime I get a chance to unwind I play tennis or golf,”
he says. “I believe in balance. I don't think one should just work
and work. Life is a journey and you get one chance to live
it.”
Not
surprisingly, George is a mix of brain and brawn. He did his MBA
at the University of North Carolina as well as from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Thereafter, he worked for several years in
the healthcare and pharmaceuticals industry. Today, he is the CEO
of www.GamePlanX.com, a firm that stimulates high-performance
growth in many companies with the help of world-renowned scholars,
through an online presence. “We offer training and teamwork
solutions to people in 72 countries,” says George.
George,
who has a keen sense of international business, says that the USA and
China have become superpowers due to an enormous capacity for hard
work and a pride in their country. In contrast, we lack a pan Indian
attitude. "When two Indians meet abroad, they invariably ask
from which part of India one is," he says. "So, one is
classified either as a north or a south Indian. This can be a
drawback. But an Indian’s great gift is that he is enterprising,
hard-working and creative. Because of this, Indians will become
world-beaters one day.”
(The New Indian Express, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram)
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