CHANDIGARH, India: Another Milkha Singh is in the limelight. The 17yearold golfing son of the “Flying Sikh”, Chiranjiv Milkha Singh romped home with the Asian circuit title at the Doug Sanders International Junior Golf Championships at Brisbane.

Returning home the other day after the two-day competition, the beaming teenager held aloft his trophies with justifiable pride. As champion of the Asian circuit, Ghiranjiv qualified for the World Junior Golf Championships to be held at Edinburgh (Scotland) on August 16, and 17 (now he is preparing his best to get for the world title) where winners from the European, American and Australian circuits will tee off with the Chandigarh youngster for world honors.

Chiranjiv is in the midst of his preparations for C.B.S_E. Class X. examination: And he wants to do his matriculation this year so that he can devote more time to golf. He is definitely going “to work very hard” for the Edinburgh Championships “once my examinations are over”.

On account of his preparations for the examination, Chiranjiv is sorry that he will have to miss the All India Open Golf Championships at Delhi, which he describes as “the most important golf meet of the country”.

In the Brisbane championships, Chiranjiv returned scores of 79, 71, 74, and 76 in the four round contest. The course par is 71 and he was happy he turned in a score of par in the second round. He totaled’ 299.

Pakistan’s Mohammad Saeed was 11 strokes behind in the second place and Hong Kong’s Chnstian 16 strokes behind him in the third spot.

“I came third in the World Championships in 1985 when I was 13 and…. | want to become a professional golfer in the next three or four years”, he said.

Chiranjeev’s father, Milkha, is the director of sports in the Punjab State in India so the youngster may not have too many problems in achieving his aim.

Earlier, it was the charming wife of the former Olympian who had tried to calm Milkha. Nirmal, who in her own rights was a top sportswoman, having represented India in volleyball, tried to remind the “Flying Sikh” that winning or losing was all part of the game.

Confided Milkha, who now plays golf during his leisure that he hated to lose. He explained that this did not mean taking defeat unsparingly. It only meant working to a pitch which spurred one on to a better performance.

“My son has the same temperament”, he said. “For one so young he gets so worked up when he plays a bad shot”.

Also accompanying the family, now living in Chandigarh, was Milkha’s petite daughter, Sonia, who was a great source of encouragement and moral support to her brother. Seeing her nobody would guess she is one of the country’s high ranked tennis players. What a family! A world class athlete, a national volleyball player, a golfing prodigy, a tennis star — not forgetting the medical student who is also an ace swimmer.

Article extracted from this publication >>  August 7, 1987