Editor,
A golfing partner of mine sent me the following which I thought I must share with all golfers and non-golfers of the north east as to why the Shillong golf course is called Golf links.
” A links golf course, sometimes referred to as a seaside links is the oldest style of golf- course, first developed in Scotland. The word comes from the Scot’s language and refers to an area of coastal sand dunes. It also retains this more general meaning in the Scottish English dialect. It can be treated as singular even though it has an ‘s’ at the end, and occurs in place names that precede the development of golf.
Links are located in coastal areas, on sandy soil, often amid dunes with few water hazards and few if any trees. This reflects both the nature of the scenery where the sport happened to originate, and the fact that only limited resources were available to golf course architects at the time, and all earth moving had to be done by hand, so it was kept to a minimum. The challenges of links golf falls into two categories. Firstly, the nature of the courses themselves, which tend to be characterised by uneven fairways, thick rough and small bunkers known as ‘pot bunkers’. Secondly, due to their coastal location many links courses are frequently windy. This affects the style of play required, favouring players who are able to play low accurate shots. As many links courses consist literally, of an ‘outward’ nine which returns in the opposite direction, players often have to cope with opposite wind patterns in each half of their round.
Links courses remain most common in Ireland and also in the UK, especially in Scotland. The Open Championship is always played on links courses, even though there are some celebrated courses in the UK which are not links, and this is one of the main things which differentiates it from the three major championships held in the USA. There are also some well known links courses in the US such as Pebble Beach Golf Links and a few others in Oregon and Georgia states.
Links courses tend to be on, or at least near to, a coast, and the term is typically associated with coastal courses. However, links conditions can be duplicated on suitable ground, even hundreds of miles inland. Notable example of an inland links-style course is Sand Hills Golf Club, a much acclaimed early 2000’s lay-out in the sand Hills of Nebreska. Similar is the case with Shillong Golf Links.”
Happy golfing.
Yours etc.,
H.P.(Micky) Massar
Kolkata
Whither free speech!
Editor,
Apropos the news report “Congress slams BJP demand to strip Sen of Bharat Ratna”(July 26). No congratulation is enough for Amartya Sen for calling a spade a spade instead of joining the mainstream and singing blind paeans of the overhyped Narendra Modi. As a matter of fact, no true nationalist Indian can ever desire to see Modi as his/her Prime Minister.
The trumpet of Narendra Modi’s hat-trick in the Assembly elections can never hide the fact that Gujarat ranked 13th among the major Indian states in State Hunger Index. Gujarat “boasts” of 47 percent of underweight and malnourished children in its midst which is not only higher than the national average, but far higher than even the poorest Sub-Saharan countries of Somalia and Ethiopia. Rightly has Sen pointed out about the extremely poor record of Gujarat in the sectors of education and health. The “prosperous” state plays host to innumerable poor and unemployed and regularly gets hit by droughts leading to suicides of farmers. And his failure in containing the Gujarat pogrom against Muslims remain one of the greatest scandals and horrors of independent India but the greater tragedy lies in the fact that far from being repentant about it, innumerable victims are yet to be adequately rehabilitated, compensated or provided justice. A society’s true progress is embedded in human development and on that scale Modi is an absolute failure. And Modi’s desire of reaping electoral dividends by banking on ‘Gujarati asmita’ and ‘Hindu rights’ assault the very essence of India itself which is based on secularism and heterogeneity. Sen deserves thanks for acting as a true nationalist and guiding the nation instead of remaining aloof in an ivory tower of his own. Now each and every person holds full democratic right to remain fond of Modi or dislike any other leader. But the fact remains that Sen also possesses the same right to exercise his free independent opinion. By which moral authority does the BJP MP Chandan Mitra demand that the next NDA Government should strip Sen of Bharat Ratna? Just because Sen does not want to see Modi as his Prime Minister! The rising intolerance towards opposing viewpoints in India once again blatantly exemplifies that Hitler might be dead, but Fascism not. Perhaps, the “nationalist” in Mitra has forgotten that by trying to throttle the independent voice of Sen and insulting one of the greatest humanitarians of India, he himself has assaulted the very essence of India ie democracy and freedom of speech.
One hopes that the common people will wake up from their slumber instead of getting brainwashed by the vested interests and propaganda machinery and protest against the leaders who exploit regionalism and communalism as trump cards to win elections. And the concerned authorities should ensure real development of the nation through adoption of measures which can uplift the downtrodden from miserable lives instead of remaining obsessed with Sensex and growth-related statistics. Also the nation should beware of such mindsets which feel no qualms in insulting the Conscience of our nation just because of his “sin” of questioning the policies of a political demi-God or “holy cow”.
Yours etc.,
Kajal Chatterjee
Kolkata – 14