Who will tame the beast at the Indian Open?

Players will be sweating bullets at the 2025 Hero Indian Open finale on DLF's Gary Player Course

- Meraj Shah

Peering down the 17th fairway from the men's championship tees of the Gary Player course (DLF Golf & Country Club) in Gurugram, you really have to scour the landscape to locate the landing spot that you're supposed to be aiming for. "It's only about 15 yards wide...they've narrowed it down," says Vani Kapoor. Amateurs never get this view, and with good reason—the difficulty levels are off the charts. On this occasion your writer has elected to play from these tees with Kapoor, India's top-ranked women's professional, to get a taste of what the players at the ongoing 2025 Hero Indian Open face on the closing stretch. "The last three holes are crucial and that's where the game can really turn. I wouldn't try any fancy shots...it's really hard to recover," she adds. That point is driven home repeatedly over this misguided adventure in which Kapoor does well to shoot one-over par while your writer shoots his entire handicap in three holes.

The crowds love drama. When it comes to golf—a sport unrivaled in its ability to make good players look like rank novices—weekend amateurs derive a great deal of pleasure watching professionals falter and make a spectacle of themselves. Golf might be cruel, but it's egalitarian, and everyone, ability no bar, is subject to the vagaries of the game.

Besides, what sort of respectable quest comes without its share of travails? Certainly not the Hero Indian Open, that, much like the US Open, has acquired the reputation of being raw and unforgiving. This newly minted status as one of the "toughest tests in golf" (at least this side of the Suez Canal), is entirely on account of the Open's newest venue—the Gary Player course—at the DLF Golf & Country Club, which is hosting the event for the sixth consecutive year.