Meet Sahith Theegala, the Indian-American shining on the fairways

What are Indian-Americans largely known for? Academics would be the obvious answer. However, there have been a handful who have diversified into sports, ranging from tennis (Amritraj juniors, Uberoi sisters among others) to gymnastics (Mohini Bharadwaj Barry) to basketball (Sim Bullar). Now, Sahith Theegala is making waves in golf.

After enjoying a successful amateur career, he is now creating a buzz on the professional tour. Winner of the 2020 Haskins Award, the Jack Nicklaus Award and the Ben Hogan Award — the fifth player ever to sweep all awards instituted to honour collegiate golfers — the 23-year-old Theegala has made an instant impression in his debut PGA season too. While he finished T47 in his debut event, the Fortinet Championship, he smashed rounds of 64, 67, 67 before feeling the heat in the final round to sign off a respectable T8 at the Sanderson Farms Championship last week.

So what prompted the Los Angeles, California resident to take up golf while many Indian-Americans prefer excelling in academics instead of swinging clubs and acing spelling bee competitions rather than taming the roughs on a golf course?

“Nobody in my family played sports, it just wasn't a thing," said Theegala in an interaction with select Indian media ahead of the Shriners Children’s Open. "But my dad when he came to the States — he was very active even back in India, he ran some marathons and played some cricket and did all kinds of stuff, but he loved watching sports and I think he got into that culture when he went to Kansas State.

“So when I was young, he would always have sports up on the TV. The three main ones were basketball, golf and cricket. I got into basketball and golf when I was six years old, because, it’s America. It was pretty funny because nobody in my family really knew sports (as a career). But we found out pretty quickly that I was really good at golf, so and again more credit to my father, he found a way with no background or knowledge of how to kind of get me to the next level, found a way to do it. So that's how I got into golf.”

Having Indian parents meant Theegala had to balance academics with golf. Given the fact that he wasn’t exceptional like Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele, Justin Thomas and Bryson DeChambeau — all ranked inside top-10 in the world and in their 20s — Theegala chose the long route towards becoming a professional and has been successful at it. Trained by Rick Hunter, Theegala kept turning heads during his collegiate season with some wonderful displays. College golf in the US is as strong and competitive as age-group cricket in India.

Now having gained promotion to the PGA Tour, Theegala can’t wait to compete against the best. “A lot of these younger guys like Scottie Scheffler, Collin Morikawa, Matt Wolff, even Viktor Hovland on the European side, I grew up playing junior golf and college golf and seeing them succeed kind of puts a little bit more fire under my belly as well, knowing that I competed with them my whole life. Obviously when they were younger their trajectories were a little bit higher than I was. I felt like I was like not a tier below but I wasn't playing at the same level as they were until really recently."

“But it just gave me a lot of inspiration, knowing that I played with these guys and these guys are able to do it and nothing drastic has changed in their kind of games to take them to the next level, like good golf in college is still going to lead to good golf at the next level. So seeing Collin win two majors and a WGC and all the success is really, really cool and hopefully I get to talk to him a little bit coming up, but it just gives me more confidence to see that it's doable.”

Check out latest DH videos here