THE INDOFILES

Vijay

If you are a casual golf fan, you may know that the US Open is being played starting on Thursday through Sunday at Bethpage Black on Long Island. And much of the fanfare leading up to it has been centered on, as is usually the case, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. Woods is always the center of media attention; Mickleson has been a US Open bridesmaid several times, and this year in particular, he is playing in light of recent news that his wife has breast cancer.

But if you are into Asiatic things when it comes to golf, as I am, I’d recommend keeping your eye on one threesome in particular: Vijay Singh, Jeev Milkha Singh, and KJ Choi - teeing off at 7:44am tomorrow. Vijay, of course, has had plenty of press over the years (including by yours truly), some of it quite negative. His surliness is often read as him being ungraceful, but that is another conversation entirely. Choi has won multiple times on the PGA Tour, and has been a presence in American golf over the past several years. But the least known of this group is Jeev, who is often wrongly mistaken to be Vijay’s kinsman of some sort.

Jeev, the son of Milkha Singh, an Indian track and field Olympiad, is a central force behind the growth of golf in India and a multiple winner on the Asian and European Tours. He is playing more and more in the US these days.

The cliché goes that you should watch Woods because a player like him comes around only once in a lifetime. I suggest you follow Vijay and Jeev not because they’ll come around once in a lifetime, but rather because they are hopefully setting a trend for more Indian golfers in the future. Or to put it another way, they are a sign of good Singhs to come!