By Rahil Gangjee
Before anyone starts pulling out record books and world rankings, let me say this upfront. India has produced golfers who have achieved far more on the global stage than the names I am about to talk about. This is not a list of our most decorated champions. This is not about who won the most on the European Tour or who cracked the highest world ranking.
This is about something else altogether.
This is about the men who came from nothing, who learned the game while carrying bags, collecting balls, cutting grass and borrowing clubs, and who quietly built the foundation of professional golf in this country. The ones who turned “rags to riches” from a cliché into a lived reality. The ones who made it possible for later generations to dream of golf as a profession.
These are the unsung heroes. The domestic kings. The pioneers who didn’t just play the game in India — they created the ecosystem for it.
Chronologically, the story begins with three towering figures: Rohtas Singh, fondly called Guruji; Basad Ali, the artist of the short game; and Ali Sher, the man who broke a psychological barrier by winning the Indian Open as a professional. Their stories deserve to be told before we even get to the more familiar modern names.
Rohtas Singh – Guruji, the Original Torchbearer
Rohtas Singh was not just a golfer. He was an institution.
Long before corporate-backed academies, long before structured junior programmes, long before fitness trainers and launch monitors, there was Guruji — winning, teaching, inspiring and carrying Indian golf on his shoulders. He came from humble beginnings, learned the game the hard way, and went on to dominate the domestic circuit for decades. He won an astonishing number of tournaments across India at a time when travel itself was a luxury and equipment was often borrowed or outdated.
But what made Rohtas special was not only his victories. It was his role as a mentor. Generations of Indian professionals will tell you that they didn’t just learn how to hit a draw or read a putt from him; they learned how to conduct themselves, how to survive on tour, how to respect the game. That is why he wasn’t just called a champion — he was called Guruji.
In today’s language, we would call him a “pathfinder”. In simpler terms, he showed that a boy from modest means could become the best in the country and make a living out of this beautiful, cruel, addictive game.
Basad Ali – The Magician Around the Greens
If Rohtas was the general, Basad Ali was the artist.
Every era has a player whose short game makes fellow professionals stop and stare. Basad was that man in his time. Around the greens, he had hands that could make a golf ball obey like it was tied to a string. Touch, imagination, feel — words that commentators love to use today — were simply natural to him.
He, too, came through the hard route. No silver spoon. No privileged access. Just hours and hours of practice, an intuitive understanding of turf and trajectory, and a competitive fire that made him a regular presence at the top of leaderboards. In many ways, he represented a generation of Indian golfers who had world-class skill but limited opportunity to showcase it beyond our borders.
Basad’s career also quietly underlined one of the great what-ifs of Indian golf: how many such gifted players could have gone much further internationally if they had received support at the right time, not after they had already proven everything at home?
Ali Sher – The Man Who Changed a Mindset
Then came 1991. And with it, Ali Sher.
Until that moment, the Indian Open — our most prestigious tournament — had been a fortress. Foreign professionals came, played, and usually won. Indian players competed bravely, occasionally contended, but rarely crossed the final line first. There was an invisible psychological barrier: we belong, but do we truly belong at the top?
Ali Sher smashed that barrier.
A former caddie at Delhi Golf Club, he knew the course, he knew the grind, and he knew what it meant to fight for every opportunity. When he lifted the Indian Open trophy as the first Indian professional to do so, it was not just a personal triumph. It was a moment of collective belief. Two years later, when he won it again, it confirmed that 1991 was no fluke.
For the first time, young Indian golfers could look at the biggest event in their country and say, “One of us can win this. One of us has won this.”
That shift in mindset is priceless. You cannot measure it in prize money or world ranking points. You measure it in dreams.
The Rags-to-Riches Thread
What connects Rohtas, Basad and Ali Sher is not just talent. It is origin.
These were not academy-polished juniors flying business class to international events as teenagers. These were men who learned the game from the ground up — literally in some cases — and who climbed every rung of the ladder with grit rather than privilege. They are living proof that golf in India was never only a rich man’s game; it was a dreamer’s game.
And yet, here lies the great irony.
While they became kings at home, most of them never truly got the chance to wage sustained battles on the global stage. Not because they lacked ability, but because they lacked something far more practical: timely sponsorship.
In India, sponsorship has traditionally followed international success. You do well abroad, you get backing. You start earning big, brands come calling. But golf doesn’t work like that. To do well abroad, you first need to travel, to play, to fail, to learn, to adapt — and all of that costs money. Serious money.
You need support before the breakthrough, not after. You need it when you are honing your talent, when you are gaining exposure, when you are taking those first nervous steps into bigger fields. Not when you are already cashing cheques.
It is a cruel loop: you need sponsorship to compete internationally, but you need international results to get sponsorship.
Rohtas, Basad and Ali Sher lived in an era when that loop was even tighter. Facilities were limited, information was scarce, and corporate interest in golf was minimal. Yet, they built careers, inspired generations and laid the tracks on which the Indian golf train now runs.
Why These Stories Matter Today
In countries like Japan, even players who compete largely on the domestic tour are national celebrities. Their stories are told, their struggles understood, their journeys celebrated. The public knows them not just as golfers, but as characters.
In India, we often wait for global validation before we anoint our heroes.
Perhaps it is time we reverse that thinking.
Perhaps it is time we celebrate the men who made the journey possible in the first place — the Guruji who taught by example, the short-game magician who showed what skill truly means, and the former caddie who dared to believe he could conquer his own national open.
This is the first chapter of that tribute.
In the next columns, we will move forward in time to the next wave of rags-to-riches heroes — Ashok Kumar, Feroz Ali, SSP Chawrasia and the modern-day fairytale of Shubham Jaglan.
Different era. Same hunger. Same dream.
Because every superstar story begins long before the spotlight — usually in the shadows, with a borrowed club, a scuffed ball, and a belief that refuses to quit.
Rahil Gangjee is a professional golfer, sharing through this column what life on a golf course is like