There is something wonderfully strange about golfers. We will happily travel 3,000 kilometres to play a course we have never seen, spend a small fortune on a hotel, eat whatever is put in front of us, wake up at an ungodly hour and then spend four hours walking around looking for a little white ball that we ourselves hit into trouble. And at the end of it all, we will say, “What a fantastic holiday!”
That, in a nutshell, is golf tourism.
For a golfer, a holiday is rarely just a holiday. Give us a decent golf course, good weather, a comfortable bed and something interesting to eat afterwards and we are sold. Add a beautiful landscape and a little history and culture, and you might have to physically drag us home.
India has all of these things. What it hasn’t always had is the confidence to sell itself as a golfing destination.
That could be changing.
The Ministry of Tourism has once again identified golf tourism as an important niche segment, while the Indian Golf Premier League has announced an ambitious plan to mobilise $2 billion towards golf-tourism infrastructure. The idea is to combine golf with hospitality, travel, MICE and destination development and, importantly, take the game beyond the traditional big-city markets.
And honestly, it makes sense.
India is almost tailor-made for golf tourism. We have mountains, beaches, deserts, forests, heritage cities and enough different cuisines to keep a golfer happy for several lifetimes. More importantly, we have golf courses in some extraordinary locations.
Take Kashmir. I have always felt that if you could combine golf and scenery, somebody forgot to tell the rest of the world about Srinagar. Royal Springs, with the mountains as a backdrop, is the sort of place where you can spend more time looking around than looking at your scorecard. Gulmarg and Pahalgam offer an entirely different experience. You could quite easily build a golf holiday around the Valley and have a story to tell when you return home.
Then there is Bengaluru. The city has quietly become an important golf destination, with courses such as the Karnataka Golf Association and the newer resort-style facilities around the city. And the great thing about Bengaluru is that you can play golf in the morning, have lunch, attend a meeting, complain about the traffic and still somehow convince yourself you had a relaxing day.
That is a skill only Bengaluru can teach you.
Goa is another obvious opportunity. Most people think beaches, nightlife and seafood when they hear Goa. Golfers think, “Where is the nearest tee?” Imagine packaging golf with a few days by the beach, some good food and a little sightseeing. The non-golfer in the family gets a holiday and the golfer gets his rounds. Everyone wins.
That last part is important because golf tourism is not just about golfers.
The golfer may travel for the course, but the family travels for everything else. That means hotels, restaurants, transport, sightseeing, shopping, wellness and entertainment all become part of the package. A golf holiday can therefore generate much more economic activity than simply collecting a green fee.
And golfers are particularly attractive tourists because we tend to stay longer. We don’t fly across the world to play nine holes and catch the next flight home. If we are travelling with three or four clubs and a pair of shoes that cost more than our first car, we are going to make the trip worthwhile.
There is another big opportunity here: tournaments.
I have played enough professional golf to know that a tournament can change the personality of a place. During an event, hotels fill up, restaurants get busy, taxis have more passengers and suddenly people who normally wouldn’t know a three-wood from a railway sleeper are discussing golf.
India already has professional tournaments that can become tourism products in their own right. Why should a golf tournament only be marketed to golf fans? Package it with local experiences and suddenly you have a destination event.
The same thinking can work with amateur events, corporate golf and international golf groups. Bring 50 or 100 golfers into a city, give them three or four courses to play, throw in some sightseeing and food, and you have created a small travelling economy.
The biggest challenge, of course, is infrastructure and consistency.
Golfers are a demanding lot. We will forgive a bad lie. We will forgive a bad score. We will even forgive our playing partner for giving us unsolicited swing advice. But we will not forgive a golf course that promises one thing and delivers another.
Course maintenance, caddies, transport, booking systems, accommodation and accessibility all matter. International golfers need to know what they are getting before they board a flight. A beautiful photograph on Instagram is not enough when you are standing on the first tee with a trolley, 18 holes ahead of you and a handicap to protect.
India also needs better golf-tourism circuits. Instead of selling one golf course, sell an experience. Delhi-Jaipur. Bengaluru-Mysuru. Goa. Kashmir. Pune and the western Maharashtra circuit. Rajasthan. Even newer destinations can be built around golf if the infrastructure is planned properly.
And this is where I think the next few years could get really interesting.
India doesn’t have to copy Scotland, Spain or Thailand. We don’t need to become somebody else’s golf destination. We can create our own version.
Imagine a week where you play three or four very different courses, eat incredible food, see a bit of India, stay in good hotels and finish the trip with a tournament or a friendly game. And if your score is terrible, nobody needs to know. You can always blame the jet lag.
The numbers suggest there is a genuine opportunity. One recent market estimate puts India’s golf-tourism market at around $459 million in 2026 and projects it to more than double by 2033.
But numbers are only part of the story. Golf tourism is really about selling an experience.
The game takes you places. Sometimes literally. I’ve played golf in enough parts of the world to know that some of my best memories have had very little to do with my score. They have been about the people, the food, the scenery, the ridiculous bets, the stories afterwards and occasionally the miracle of making a birdie when you had absolutely no business doing so.
India has millions of stories waiting to be attached to golf. We just need to start telling them.
And perhaps, for once, we should stop worrying about whether India can become a golf-tourism destination and start asking a more interesting question:
Why shouldn’t it?
After all, we already have the courses, the culture, the food, the scenery and, most importantly, enough golfers who are willing to travel anywhere in the world just to lose a few balls in a different postcode.
Rahil Gangjee is a professional golfer, sharing through this column what life on a golf course is like