PCD Publications - General overview

Phil Ryan and Thomas E. King

Tee Off in India: People, Places and Golf, the first-ever golf and travel guide to India, superbly fills the need for an authoritative publication on a sport that is rapidly gaining in popularity among Indians and visitors to this country.

The lavishly illustrated 128 page publication was co-authored by Indian golf guru, Phil Ryan, the design architect of numerous signature golf courses in this country, and multi award winning professional travel photojournalist and specialist writer on the subcontinent, Thomas E. King.

Designed as the definitive guide to the current state of play in India, the glossy book includes chapters on a number of relevant topics ranging from the history of the sport in India and golf and the environment to personalities that have been instrumental in shaping and developing golf in this country.

The first edition of the book – it’s intended that Tee Off in India will be updated every two to three years to remain as the most authoritative reference available to the sport in this country – features profiles on Ashok Malik, one of India’s most esteemed amateur golfers, Amir Nensey of Royal Palms Golf & Country Club, Mumbai, Ashwani Khurana of Unitech Karma Lakelands, New Delhi and Ashok Kumar of the Eagleton – The Golf Village, Bangalore.

Several dozen prime courses are profiled in depth with valuable tee tips included at the end of each chapter. As well, there is a comprehensive listing at the end of the guide with the contact details of more than 140 golf courses in India.

“ The book, however, is not a playing guide to each and every hole of any particular golf course,” said Ryan and King. “Rather it’s an A – Z guide of where to play in India from the Agra Golf Club located just beyond the Taj Mahal to the tea garden hugging Wellington Gymkhana course in the Nilgiris of South India.”

There are several aspects of Tee Off in India: People, Places and Golf that distinguish it from any other book that has ever been written about golf in India.

For starters, this is the first book to detail and then lavishly illustrate India’s finest golf courses. More than 250 photographs have been included in the convenient A4 size soft cover book.

There are sweeping double page pictorial spreads of the Delhi Golf Club, the only golf course in the world that contains medieval mosques and monuments, the Eagleton – the Golf Village, outside Bangalore, a sporting oasis crafted by Phil Ryan and his team at Pacific Coast Design, Melbourne and, of course, the Royal Calcutta Golf Club which celebrated its 175th anniversary in November 2004.

Apart from green playing fields in and around Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Bangalore, the book features numerous other emerging golf destinations that sport quality courses like Coimbatore, Jaipur, Chikmagalur and Srinagar.