The Dubai based teenager Raghav Gulati, at just 15 years played a 7 under on the second day of the Siddhartha Bansal Memorial tournament (WAGR). He was quite delighted with his performance and maintained his streak a good score resulting in a win with a 6 under at the end of day 3. We had a few questions regarding his compelling game and he was quite happy to answer them.

We asked him how he started playing golf, to which he said,” I started playing at the age 5 in Delhi, my father taught me golf because he loved the sport and I too am stuck to it, I used to play twice a week and when I moved to Dubai, I started taking it up more seriously.”
What is his driving force to continue performing, he says that the want to be better, to end up with a good score each day and the self-satisfaction and to be happy with himself.

Next we wanted to know how he prepares himself for upcoming tours and gets himself ready, to which he replied by saying that he usually finds a weak spot in his game, a couple of weeks before the day of the tour and he works on them consistently and then he goes onto the golf course just like he did before the Siddharth Bansal Memorial tour and he went out and played with his friend and fellow golfer and figured out what were his strengths on the golf course so that he could play to them throughout the tour.

When asked about any golfers he looked up to he was quite coy about it and simply said he tries to just inspire himself.
He mentioned that he has looked into the golf scenario in India and he wishes to play more often here, his aspirations are to play college golf in the future and eventually become a pro.

Raghav said that during off season he just practices daily and does not take any offs unless he is sick.

As for competitors, he was looking forward to play against Joysurjo Dey. He said that when going up with a good score he tries to see he is doing right and just stick to it to keep up with his consistency rather than looking at the negatives or too much of the positives.

With such a good score we wanted to know how he dealt with the praise as well as criticism? Raghav said that he doesn’t really pay much attention to either because at the end of the day all that mattered was what he thought of himself, although the praise helps and makes you feel better but he does not really look out for it and as for criticism he doesn’t pay much attention to it.

Lastly, we asked him how he felt about his performance over the past 3 days and that too in the place where his father actually started playing golf, so to have a score of 6 under coming back to Kolkata, what were his feelings about it, he said that he plays at Tolly once a year, which added to his performance but he has never really played that well here so to finally have a breakthrough felt really quite nice.