Bangalore-based Aditi Ashok (14) is a natural of the golfing greens. Having started to swing the club at age six, she has since become the youngest player in the garden city with a scratch handicap, and last year this early teen was crowned the national amateur champion at the 95th All India Ladies Amateur Championship (Chandi-garh). That’s not all. She bagged the Rolex Player of the Year award in the U-18 junior (girls) category and was also adjudged the youngest amateur golfer to win a professional ladies open tournament. Currently Aditi is ranked No. 210 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings among 2,695 women world-wide and is also the Under-15 junior champion of India, a title she has held for the past three years.
The only child of Ashok Gudlamani, a property consultant, and homemaker Maheshwari, this class IX student of Frank Anthony Public School, Bang-alore, attributes her precocious success to home and school support. “Without the encouragement and unconditional support of my school, parents, coaches and the Indian Golf Union, I wouldn’t have got anywhere,” she acknowledges.
Aditi played her first round of 18 holes in 2004 at age six at the Bangalore Golf Club, where she used to practice putting with her parents on weekends. Backed by a maximum handicap of 36 which qualified her to compete in club tournaments, she won her maiden national award at age nine bagging a bronze in the 91st All India Ladies Amateur Championship, at Eagleton (an hour’s drive from Bangalore). Since then she has gone from strength to strength. At age 11, she was highly ranked in the South Zone junior golf and the Indian Golf Union’s national junior and amateur tours.
All this hasn’t come easy. Aditi invests 3-4 hours daily on the greens with Karnataka Golf Association (KGA) professional coach Tarun Sardesai, and recently attended an intensive training workshop with inter-national coach Steven Giuliano. In addition, she works out daily on a fitness regimen prescribed by coach Nicolas Cabaret, and has stayed off aerated drinks and junk food since she was six. “More and more juniors are taking to the greens with as many following the game avidly,” observes Aditi.
With a national trophy occupying pride of place on her mantelpiece and high hopes of bagging a double this year, Aditi is practicing intensively and has set her sights on qualifying for the Asian Games 2014 and Olympics 2016.
Although she is bent on making a professional career in golf after completing her class XII exam in 2015, right now Aditi is striking a fine balance between academics and golf while preparing for her class X boards.
Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)
Shreya Singh
Even as an Indian manned-mission to the Moon remains a distant dream, a small town in Mahar-ashtra has already entered the space age. Shreya Singh (12), a pre-teen resident of Nagothane — a tiny village 100 km from Mumbai, the country’s commercial capital — was awarded top honours in the International Space Settlement Contest 2012, organised by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), USA in April. A class VII pupil of the Jindal Mount Litera Zee School, Nagothane (JMLZ-N), Shreya got the first prize in the class VI-VII (individual) category besting 1,246 children worldwide for her 78-page paper titled ‘Revelation 19 — The Settlement of Mars’, a comprehensive rese-arch project detailing an alternate habitat for human settlement on the Red Planet with in-depth representation of life and its necessities.
After getting briefed about NASA’s International Space Settlement contest and its requirements by her maths teacher, Kalpesh Makawana, Shreya began work on the project named after chapter 19 of the Book of Revelations of the Old Testament, which prophecies the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to establish a new terrestrial kingdom.
“Conceptualising and writing the project report wouldn’t have been possible without the great support I received from my teachers and parents,’’ acknowledges Shreya, daughter of R.K. Singh, an HR professional with Maharashtra Seamless Ltd, a division of the D.P. Jindal Group and his wife Renu, a homemaker. As winner of the NASA award, Shreya was invited to the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) held in Washington DC between May 24-28 this year.
Shreya’s achievement has generated great excitement in village Nagothane (pop. 10,168) and in Raigad district which typically suffers backward and inadequate infrastructure. “I hope this is a stepping stone and Shreya conti-nues to remain motivated in school and succeeds. Talent is not restricted to urban locales; it is everywhere and we are proving it,” says Urban D’Souza, principal, JMLZ-N (student strength 150).
Though the NASA award has won her plaudits and media headlines, this youngster has won several other awards at inter-school levels. Moreover she is a budding badminton player, and an avid reader of books and encyclo-paedias. An admirer of the great scientist Albert Einstein, Shreya reveres him as a role model.
Go girl!
Praveer Sinha (Mumbai)