The Delhi Golf Club is one of the oldest golf-courses in Asia and the oldest one in Saddi Dilli. It was founded in the 1920s as the Lodhi Club and is located at Dr. Zakir Hussain Road in Nizamuddin. It became a corporate entity on the 24th February 1950. The course was originally laid out by the British, integrating existing Mughal structures and tombs into the course. The Delhi Golf Club has undergone various changes over time, and at one point it had to sell at least a third of the land it occupied to the municipality of Dilli in order to finance itself. Today, it is a favorite meeting point of Saddi Dilli’s élite and hosts various tournaments and cups such as the Indian Open.
The course, comprises the championship 18-hole Lodhi Course, part of the Asian PGA Tour, and the shorter 9-hole Peacock Course. The latter came into being when the course was re-designed by Peter Thomson in 1976-77. The Delhi Golf Club is built on land which was the burial ground of the 14th century Lodhi dynasty. The Delhi Golf Club was originally called the “Lodhi Golf Course”, and it contains many Tughlak and Lodi dynasty monuments & is also home to over 300 species of birds.
The Delhi Golf Club was developed by a committee which was formed with the CHD (Chief of the Horticultural Department) in the Chair. The Committee was given the task of selecting a site for a 18-hole golf course and laying it out. The CHD, who was a golfing Scotsman himself had a secret passion for excavation, cannily arrived at the conclusion that should the new course be laid out in an area where buried archaeological finds were a possibility, the coming generations of Greens Sub-Committees siting bunkers, helped by many grave-digger golfers, might well unearth a sensational fact.
Musing on this agreeable prospect, he borrowed a couple of elephants from a landlord friend, un-hit by estate duty, and set off through dense undergrowth until he came to Humayun’s Tomb, where he started his reconnaissance. The panoramic sight to its west had the broad Jamuna or Yamuna; to the east, close foliage through which wild pigs rooted about and monkeys swung in gay abandon. The narrow winding strip running past the Barah Khamba, the Lal Bangla which shelters the tomb of Begum Jan, daughter of the Shah Alam, and then on to the Central Vista? Surely that strip is the now disused railway track between Nizamuddin and New Dilli.
Quite interestingly, this was the area where the army of the Lodhi King of Dilli in 1473 lay in wait for the attacking forces of King Hussain of Jaunpore and later was this area not a vast burial ground of Moghul nobles? Just the thing. Surely the area bounded by the Barah Khamba, the Lal Bangla and the Lodhi Gardens would be full of exciting hidden relics and perhaps many a good, stirring invective would die on a player’s lips in such awesome surroundings.
Securing a membership at Delhi Golf Club since then has been a status symbol and even till today, one has to wait for at least a couple of decades before he could get his hands on one of the most coveted memberships in Saddi Dilli.
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