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Addicted to the game
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Addicts Golfing Society of Southern India gets going
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Saam Chinoy (right) with a colleague
Saam Chinoy has taken over as Captain of the Addicts Golfing Society of Southern India. Since this is a pivotal year for the group, it will take part in the British Open at St. Andrews, Scotland, the Mecca of golf. Many of the keen golfers among them will get cracking next month in Malacca, Malaysia, where two events are being organised.
Into its 60th year of existence, the society was founded on June 1, 1949 by R.C. Paterson (Fat Pat to friends), L.D. Miller, W.P. Blakeslay, A.B. Spence, T.B. Lawrence and J. Jackson. This set of expatriate Englishmen made the most of a legal loophole that helped them obtain liquor permits in prohibition-prevalent Madras in the years after independence by declaring they were addicted to alcohol. Attached as much to golf as to alcohol, they couldn’t bear the thought of the ‘19th hole’ being limited to lemonade.
In a letter to his counterpart in Madras, the Secretary of the Bangalore Club had serious doubts whether a team could be raised for the Inter Club Challenge Cup, if in those hottest of climes, players were denied the opportunity to quench their thirst in a ‘proper manner.’ Legend has it that the Parry’s company donated a western commode to the society with the rear end sealed. The beer, rum, gin, whisky and a dash of water (for taste!) that were filled in it did the disappearing act soon enough, epitomising the Addicts’ credo of not playing for the cup but for what’s in it ! The governing principle down the decades has been the same though—easy does it.
A.J.A
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