A little bit of Arnold Palmer in this corner of Gurgaon

Gurgaon: Arnold Palmer, the charismatic golfer, legend of the game and globetrotting pilot who died at age 87 on Sunday afternoon, left his mark on Gurgaon too.
As has been the wont of some of the game’s best, Palmer went into golf-course design when his playing days were done. Arnold Palmer Design, his company, created more than 300 courses across the globe, and one of them happens to be right here in Gurgaon – the DLF Golf & Country Club.
It opened in 1999, back in the days when this city of condos and gleaming corporate towers was just rising up from scrubland.
Palmer never set foot in India, but his team made many a trip here to oversee the design and construction of the 18-hole layout. It is, incidentally, now a nine-hole course, and while its bragging rights have been taken away by the funky Gary Player design next door, its charm remains.
Aakash Ohri – executive director, business development, DLF Home Developers Ltd – recalls fondly the memories of his one brief meeting with Palmer, in Orlando (Florida). “Naturally, there was a lot of aura around him. Arnold Palmer was one of the pillars of modern golf and largely responsible for the way the game was transformed commercially. He, along with Mark McCormack of IMG, created the business of golf out of thin air, a business of golf that the current generation is benefitting from,” Ohri told TOI.
“Although he was not able to make it to India to see his golf course design in person, he was very involved in the design process, and would constantly want to know how it had shaped up.”
And it shaped up rather well, having played host to events on the Asian and European tours, one of them being the 2009 Indian Open, in which C Muniyappa, memorably and fearlessly, hit one over the water to post a win for the ages. Two years on, S S P Chawrasia, equally memorably, triumphed at the Avantha Masters.
There will always be a little bit of Arnie in a corner of Gurgaon.