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Photo: Murali Kumar k.

On course Sharmila: ‘My goal is to focus on the game right now. I want to be consistent’

Some six years ago, Sharmila loved to play any game. She was a State level athlete performing well in hurdles and long distance running.

She played basketball in her school at that time, Bishop Cotton’s and later at the Bangalore International School. She also played tennis, went horse riding, swimming and was a promising skater to boot. Around this time the Karnataka Golf Association had a programme run by the Asian Junior Golf Academy and Sharmila’s mother persuaded her to take a shot at golf.

The chief coach at the AJGA, Rick Jones, was impressed with Sharmila’s natural ability when he saw her hit the ball a very long way with her very first drive shot. He predicted a great future for the 10 year-old.

Sharmila too was curious about golf. Very soon she began to take the game seriously and with Sujai Ghorpade as her first coach, golf became the only priority. Her swimming coach was reluctant to let her go and tried hard to retain one of his promising stars. By the age of 13, Sharmila was playing competitive golf and the early years passed in gaining experience and learning to handle pressure while competing.

“I learnt a lot about humility in the first couple of years,” says the teenager with a touch of maturity now. “I had to make a lot of sacrifices in order to play golf. I had to give up horse riding, the sport I liked second best, because I could not risk a back injury. My studies too had to take a back seat to golf and though I was a good student with an average of over 85 per cent, the time spent on golf meant that I had to leave a conventional school and do my exams privately. I am doing my CBSE exams this year and studying Business Studies, Economics, Sociology, Computer Science, Psychology and English,” she said. She has private tuitions every alternate day to help her cope with the syllabus and studies.

Sharmila comes from a strong golfing family. Her father and his mother were keen golfers. On her mother’s side her uncles and cousins too are regular golfers. With so much golf blood in the family it was but natural for Sharmila to get serious about the game.

Though Sharmila has travelled around the world a fair bit thanks to golf, she has much more travelling to do in the coming years. She has already played at golf courses in Bangkok, Pakistan, Singapore, Indonesia and Doha.

Of all the foreign courses, Sharmila enjoyed playing in Doha (because it was a modern city and with swank cars) and San Diego (which was a nice play to stay). Later this year, Sharmila will most likely be playing in the Queen Sirikit tournament (venue and dates to be announced), The World Juniors at San Diego, The Asia Pacific Tournament and the Duke of York tournament at St. Andrew’s in Scotland.

Sharmila’s golf form seems to have touched a new high in the past two years. Starting with her win at the Karnataka Golf Association in 2006 (a real morale booster, according to Sharmila), she has notched up seven straight wins in the recent calendar.

The win at KGA in 2006 saw her beating a strong amateur field by 15 strokes and in this year’s ladies amateur tour, Sharmila has been winning without much difficulty.

To her credit, Sharmila has finished second in a couple of Ladies Professional Golf tournaments in the country (playing as an amateur) and taken home a couple of gold coins as awards.

This has spurred the Bangalore girl to set out new targets in the 2007 Professional calendar and eventually consider playing on the Asian and European Professional tours in the near future.

Like most normal teenagers, Sharmila loves music (hip hop and house), shopping, reading (favourite author Harlen Coben), surfing the internet and chatting. She enjoys hanging around with her old school friends and loves to travel and meet new people.

Her mother is her biggest inspiration and her golf mentor at present. “I am not very certain what my plans are for the future at this moment, though I know what the possibilities are. My goal is to focus on the game right now and play under par in as many tournaments as possible. I want to be consistent and when I am ready for it, playing on the foreign circuits is very much on the cards,” Sharmila noted.

For a blossoming 16-year-old with a photogenic face and loads of golfing talent, the world is certainly at her feet right now.

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