There are some sportsmen whom I have stopped taking at face value. I have learnt my lessons the hard way and there was a lot of hurt and pain involved.
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It started with Ben Johnson and his steroid-fuelled 9.79-second 100-metres dash at the Seoul Olympics. Growing up in some of the most interior parts of India – my father was a mining engineer and we lived in places where there was no television even in the mid 1980s and the newspapers usually arrived two days late from the nearest big towns – we really weren’t exposed much to international sports stars, but Johnson was an exception.
What he was doing then on the track was mind-boggling. Next to the mandatory posters of Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar, most of us had pinned up the chiseled frame of Johnson, with every sinew bursting as he swept past his rivals like a runaway locomotive.
And then that dream shattered. What I remember was how we dismissed the reports at first. It was unbelievable that our hero could have stooped to such levels and we were convinced the Canadian was the victim of some sinister American plot to ensure Carl Lewis won the gold. It took us time to get used to stop admiring ‘Big Ben’.
Then came Mohammed Azharuddin. There was so much art in his wristy flicks and crispy on-drives, he really was the Michelangelo of batting. But I admired him more because he was one of the most grounded, down-to-earth, honest and hard-working athletes I have ever come across. He was shy, respectful of others to a fault, extremely religious and God-fearing.
To see the transformation of Azhar’s personality, and the subsequent life ban for his involvement in match-fixing, was, in my view, one of the greatest sporting tragedies of all time.
Then there was Lance Armstrong. If you want to be counted as a Superman among athletes, all you need to do is win the Tour de France – easily one of the most grueling sporting endeavours in the world – once. Armstrong did it seven times, and he did it after battling cancer. Then there was the amazing work his foundation did for cancer patients… he really was the ultimate sportsman for me – not only did he dazzle the fans with his achievements, he actually gave us so much hope.
We all knew what happened after that. Throughout the last few years, I kept believing in him, until that infamous interview to Oprah Winfrey in which he confessed. A few days later, I trashed my copy of ‘It’s Not About The Bike’. It was easily one of my top-five books of all time, and throwing it away gave me a cathartic feeling.
So, in a column on golf, why did I bring in all these cheats?
That’s because in a recent interview to Golf Digest, Armstrong spoke at length on the sport that has now become a passion for him, and said he would never be able to cheat in golf.
Armstrong wrote: “Cycling, it was the Wild West. Nobody considered doping cheating. It was an arms race where absolutely anything went, and it was every man for himself.
“You might consider me the last guy to have anything to say about cheating, but golf is different. I love adhering to a code of honour that we in cycling didn’t have. If I moved my ball in the rough and got caught, I wouldn’t just regret it, I’d be heartbroken forever. When I think about reform in cycling, I think about golf.”
Being an unabashed fan of golf, this ringing endorsement of the Royal & Ancient Game is most welcome, but with his credibility at zero I find it hard to believe him.
Mostly because golf is self-governed; players have the responsibility to play fairly and be honest to themselves, their rivals and the sport. And because most decisions you take on a golf course are a result of your own thinking, it is one sport that helps others assess your inherent character traits.
I’m not sure if it’s still done, but in the 1980s and 90s, it was very common for Japanese businessmen to invite their would be business partners to a round, and then have several ‘spies’ planted around the course who would keep an eye on the invited guest for any transgressions. If they cheated, there would be unexplained delays in the sign-ing of contracts, or the Japanese lawyers would suddenly start acting tougher and add clauses that safeguarded the interest of their client.
I am not for a moment suggesting Armstrong would cheat at golf but if I were playing with him, I would still be wary of what he does on the course, such was his fall from grace.
Atwal ‘Tin Cup’ moment
I have closely followed the career of Arjun Atwal, winner of last Sunday’s inaugural Dubai Open, from almost the day he turned pro in 1995. And the transformation from the intense golfer he was then to the laid-back charms of today, has been quite remarkable.
On Sunday, I watched Atwal finish nine holes, and then saw his two sons, Shiva and Kishan, sitting along with his father Bindi ‘Tiger’ Atwal.
The Indian ace, a three-time winner on the European Tour, was trailing Wang Jeung-hun by two shots, but the moment he saw his family, he broke into a huge smile, walked to them, hugged them, and then proceeded to the next tee.
Rewind 15 years to a tournament on the Indian PGA Tour when he produced a moment that could have been inspired by Kevin Costner’s ‘Tin Cup’. Atwal was playing at theTollygunge Club in his hometown Kolkata, and leading by one shot before reaching a par-3 hole midway through the back nine.
He hit what looked like a perfect tee shot to a difficult pin, but the ball hit the green and gently rolled into the water hazard. Atwal was so incensed he could not pull off that shot, he decided to hit again from the tee instead of taking a drop near the green, and promptly dumped another shot into the hazard. He finally ended up with a seven on that hole and lost the tournament.
Later, his only explanation that day was: “I knew I could have hit that shot”. On Sunday, when I told the 41-year-old he seems to have changed so much, Atwal answered: “It must be the age!”
