Travel Date: September 2018
In September 1995, a sporting event between 2 teams was held in Monroe County, near the finger lakes, in New York state.
Up until that point, biennial contests between these teams had been something of a mismatch, with the head-to-head standing at 23-5, with 2 ties... but despite this, I was glued to the TV.
You see, until 1994, India had 1 television station. 2, if you lived in metro cities as we did.
One of those channels magically turned on at 6 pm, before which families would line up in front of a screen eagerly waiting for it to flicker to life.
When cable television came to India in the mid 90s, Indian audiences were primed, ready and starved for content. Our family signed up for our cable TV connection in 1995, after 6 months of a steady drip of pressure on the parents and actual good performance in school exams. We had to earn it.
The 1995 Ryder Cup was the first time I'd ever watched Live golf on television, or anywhere for that matter. Until then Golf was just something that appeared 4 times a year in the monthly sports magazines.
That September weekend, I watched Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Colin Montgomerie and even David Gilford, Howard Clarke and Constantino Rocca. With Rocca's hole-in-one and a European Team Ryder Cup victory, the bug had bitten. The next few years, I spent an insane amount of time designing putt-putt golf courses in my backyard with a buried coffee mug as the hole and man-made bunkers and water hazards.
In 2016, I moved to Switzerland, with my own family in tow.
When I heard that the 2018 Ryder cup was going to be held at 'Le Golf National' outside Paris, just an hour away, it was a trip that simply had to be made.
This is the tale of the first part of one memorable week spent by 4 men, united by bloodline, a liking for good food and a love for golf.
Planning the trip
18 months before the September 2018 staging of the Ryder Cup, I made furious calls across the globe to our future travelers, Suneel Shankar based in Chennai, Adithya Moorthy in London and Bharat Moorthy in Falmouth, ME.
If we did manage to put this together, we were going to make it epic.
Our first course of action was to register on the Ryder Cup website for tickets.
It turned out that there would be a limited set of tickets for match days made available to the public, there would be a very small time window available in the day in which the tickets would have to be procured through the official ticketing website and we wouldn't allowed to log in to the ticketing platform until the window opened. Given all of this, it was no surprise that the match tickets all sold out within 5 minutes of the sale window opening. We did however manage to get tickets for 3 of the practice days on 24th - 27th September, including free transportation throughout Paris for the entire week, and none of us were anything but excited.
Over the next few months, the plan was set in stone.
September 22nd: Arrive and meet up at Paris CDG. Rent a large enough car for 4 adults, suitcases and golf bags and drive to our B&B at Orgeval
September 22nd p.m.: Golf at Bluegreen Golf St.-Quentin-en-Yvelines
September 23rd: Golf at Golf du Chateau de la Chouette
September 24th a.m.: Golf at Bluegreen Villennes-sur-Seine
September 24th p.m.: Return rental car at airport and take Metro to Paris Airbnb
September 25th - 27th: Ryder Cup practices at Le Golf National
September 28th a.m.: Flights back home
The Week
Day 1:
We all met up at the car rental desk at Paris CDG airport on the morning of 22nd September.
I had the shortest travel time - just over an hour's flight from Switzerland.
My brother flew in, over 13 hours, from India.
The other 2 other gentlemen met up in London's King's Cross St. Pancras and took the Eurostar over to Gare du Nord and took several problematic trains that never reached where they were supposed to, followed by an Uber to get to CDG.
An hour and a Renault Scenic later, our adventure had begun.
45 minutes drive took us to our first accommodation of the week. The B&B Hotel Orgeval. What can we really say about the B&B? Well, we weren't expecting this...
We checked in at a little unmanned kiosk, picked up a key from the machine and let ourselves into our functional duplex matchbox-y room. It was going to be 2 nights and our first golf round of the week was about 2.5 hours away, so we had a laugh at the twin-beds we'd have to share like we did when we were 10, and broke open a bag of snacks (all the way from India) that would eventually not even last us till midweek.
About 25 minutes drive from the B&B was our first golf course for the week, the par-72 Bluegreen Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, played off the Yellow tees.
The pro-shop was top class and had excellent golf sets available for rental. They also had a pretty good cafe and we packed sandwiches and drinks to take with us as we headed onto the course.
Deciding the rules for the week, we decided to play Europe vs. Rest of the World (RoW), with the British and Swiss resident taking on the Indian and American resident over 3 rounds of team four-ball matchplay.
Practicalities out of the way, we got our first round of the week underway with an excellent drive through the covers (ahem).
Set in a nature reserve, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines has several holes with water and natural elements intruding in but still has broad fairways and small greens.
We played about 16 holes until darkness got in the way. The Europeans held a 2-hole lead as the RoW team battled exhaustion, jet lag and a hangover and therefore secured the first point of the week.
While our first round of the week was pretty good in itself, the post-round 19th hole was pretty good too.
Day 1 was ended at Pizza Paradiso, a family-run pizza shop in a strip mall near the Intermarche supermarket. With my basic French and a fair amount of miming, we managed to order sufficient amounts of the house wine, a few bottles of beer and a large bowl of ice-cream. Enough to top-off a terrific first day.
Day 2:
Day 2 started with an early morning tee-off at Golf du Chateau de la Chouette, a Robert Trent Jones Jr. designed par 72 layout, in the Vexin region of France, built around a 16th century chateau.
Of our 3 rounds, this was the one meant to be on a 'proper' course and the drive in to the course added to the build-up. Driving in through automated iron gates and through a canopy of thick trees that blocked out the sky, it was picturesque.
However, we discovered that the fabulous course had an almost non-existent pro-shop and no club rentals to speak of.
Now desperately looking for 2 sets of right-handed clubs with which to complete our fourball, we were guided to the innards of the chateau and to a collection area for golf clubs in disrepair, located behind the kitchen fireplace. There we discovered clubs that were, perhaps last used in the early 90s.
We cobbled together, as best we could, clubs to share around the RoW team, with each of them getting 3 or 4 decent clubs with the rest being golf clubs only in name.
They were so shaken by that experience of having to chose their clubs from behind a fireplace, that one of them picked up 2 left-handed clubs and didn't even notice until the 4th hole.
Under grey skies threatening to rain and in whippy winds, our 2nd round of the week began with a much better start off the tee from Team RoW.
On the whole, the course was much greener, in much better condition but also a bit of a slog walking up hilly terrain and with several holes requiring us to hit off uphill, downhill and side-hill lies. Experience, and the lack thereof, told very early on and Team Europe was up against it right from the start.
While the day had promised much for Team Europe, especially with the initial clearing of clouds and early periods of sun, any momentum gathered from Day 1 was quickly squandered through sunk and lost balls and RoW wrapped up a 3&2 victory that ended in the pouring rain.
We dashed off the course to get cover, and drown our sorrows / celebrate our win in grease and carbs with lunch at the Buffalo Grill. There was very little veg on the menu but with that name, there wouldn't have been.
With the 2nd round of golf out of the way and half the day still to go, we drove around Orgeval in the early evening and did some aimless shopping.
On our drive, we discovered Bowlcenter Orgeval, a 30-lane bowling alley with arcade games, pool tables and a bar. With the day's win behind them, challenges were issued by Team RoW for 2 frames of bowling and 2 games of 15-ball pool.
Going by the theme of the week thus far, both bowling and pool were split right down the middle with each team winning one each.
Dinner was at Le Canard Laq (an Asian restaurant) with friendly staff and very good food.
It was all set up for a tantalizing Day 3.
Day 3:
Day 3 was an early start as well. We checked out of our B&B in Orgeval, had an early tee time, needed to play quick and get back into the car, drive back into Paris CDG and return the rental car and then lug golf bags and suitcases into Paris on the Metro.
Our deciding round was to be played at Bluegreen Villennes-sur-Seine. The course was picked based on the fact that it was 5 minutes drive from the hotel, giving us the best chance of keeping up to this tight schedule. Also the shortest of the 3 courses, a par 70, we felt this would get us in and out as quickly as possible. With rental clubs back to being top class, things were starting to look up.
In keeping with the fact that everything was on the line in Round 3, we were also blessed with the best weather of the week up until that point. Initially foggy and chilly, the sun came out and it was to be a glorious day. The last round was a seesaw battle with the lead never amounting, at any point in time, to more than 1 hole. Amidst vapor trails in sunny blue skies, the 2 teams traded blows with the best golf of the week being played by both teams.
It finally came down to the last green and 2 putts - one to halve the entire match and when that missed, a knee-knocking 4 footer for a 1-up victory.
With the pressure on, Suneel stepped up and drilled the 4-footer into the heart of darkness to give Team RoW the narrowest of wins. It had been a tremendous 3 days of golf, played in the gloom, then in the rain and ending in bright sunshine. It seemed emblematic to end our 3 days of play in this way and seemed to promise so much for the rest of the week at the Ryder Cup.
Round completed, we sat at the course restaurant and idled over a large plate of pommes-frites and unhealthy drinks, going over scorecards and shots made and missed. The drive back to CDG, despite all of the traffic, seemed to take no time at all.
We were just... happy. It had been a tremendous week with much to follow.
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