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The Top Seeds

Rich like us? Your kids could travel business class to the c'ships.

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The Top Seeds
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Rubber rip: Shivaji Mohite has built son Dhruv a Rs 1.5 crore, 10 acre race track to practise on

So is this just another overindulgent parent vicariously living out his dream through his child? "I'm providing my son what the state sports associations cannot," counters Shivaji. "I have my own resources, so why should I be dependent on state or corporate funding?"

It's a sentiment echoed by Chandigarh-based S.M.S. Sandhu whose son Ajeetesh, 17, took his first baby steps on a putting green when he was just three. Sandhu, who recently retired as a chief engineer with the Punjab government, recognised a truism of modern sport fairly early on—the making of a champion involves staggering sums of money.

"I started saving and investing wisely right from the time Ajeetesh was four. Every year I would put away Rs 4-5 lakh, and even opted for soft postings so as to manage Ajeetesh's career," says Sandhu, explaining how he forks out Rs 10 lakh annually to further his son's golfing career, for which travel costs alone amount to about Rs 3 lakh a year.

Sandhu, however, counts himself as one of the lucky ones. Two years ago, Ajeetesh became the first Asian to win a full scholarship at IMG's elite Florida-based David Leadbetter Golf Academy, ballyhooed for its rigorous programme that weaves academics with golf training. (Nowadays, doing time at the academy is considered de rigueur for anyone wanting to make a splash on the international golfing circuit.) A year's training costs about $60,000 or up to $700 an hour, depending on the type of course or the credentials of the coach you opt for.

That kind of money was no deterrent for industrialist Ravi Wadhwa and his wife Sangeeta. In 2001, the couple left their home in Delhi for Bradenton, Florida, on a sudden impulse, so that their own lives could be in sync with their kids' golf education. Enrolling their kids, Varun (12) and Tanya (8) at the David Leadbetter Academy was an "emotional and expensive affair", Sangeeta told Outlook by phone from Dallas, Texas, where the family is now based.

"It costs us about $1,000 per tournament, and there was a stage when both kids were playing in 2-3 tournaments a month. Plus basic schooling costs about $25,000 a year," she says, working out the math. Sangeeta reckons this is just a conservative estimate of the financial heft it takes to separate her teenaged virtuosos from the rest of the pack. The move, however, has borne rich results, especially for 15-year-old Tanya, who is already a force to reckon with on the amateur ladies circuit. Tanya's coach now is Peter Murphy, assistant to Hank Haney, Tiger Woods's personal coach.

As if it isn't pressure enough to have to provide the seed capital for one wannabe champion, Chander and Indu Bhambri have the onerous task of propelling their three kids—Ankita, Sanaa and Yuki—to global tennis fame. Chander, a Delhi-based doctor, says it costs him "tens of lakhs" every year to ensure that his kids participate in international tournaments held in far-off places like Mexico City and Kazakhstan, in order to prop up their world rankings. The Bhambri troika has learned to cope with a tough, frugal life, negotiating the unglamorous underbelly of minor league tennis on their own. "Barring a few plane tickets and the occasional coaching stint (IMG recently offered to sponsor Yuki's training at the plush Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida until he turns 18), we have managed the rest ourselves," he says. Last year, Yuki, currently No. 16 in the world junior boys' rankings, turned down a sponsorship offer from Apollo Tyres, as the company had asked him to shift base from Delhi to Bangalore.

So does this mean that elite kids piggybacking on parental largesse will start to have an outsize influence on Indian sport? Or that state-run associations will have less of a role to play in providing funding and infrastructure? "No," says Padukone firmly. "Often it is those who embrace sports as a way out of poverty that are the hungriest to succeed." Indeed, Indian wrestlers, boxers and caddies-turned-pros are a living testament to this maxim, as are Ethiopian distance runners or South American footballers.

What it does mean, though, is that an exclusive crop of Indian kids will now approach this "new market" i.e. sports, with a huge headstart; the lack of financial resources, so long the Achilles heel of Indian sport, has become irrelevant for them.

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