It was in Kuwait when four-year-old Aadil Bedi visited his maternal uncle Mohan Singh and HP Singh, both addicted golfers, who showed him the “ shining white” golf ball. He was so fascinated towards it that when he came back to India after holidays, he insisted on playing golf.
While his mom was also working and his father office was at home, after coming back from school his father used to take Aadil to CGA Range, Chandigarh for few hours every day. Since his original interest were coke and chips and chocolate from local pro shop, typical of any other little boy, he used to watch his dad swing while keeping himself busy with his own little things. As size of his golf clubs were not available, he would just walk all the 18 holes with his dad. "Travelling from Fatehgarh Sahib to CGA Range was daily phenomenon; else we would put up Aadil's mom's dupatta as flag on football ground of Mata Gujri College behind our house and start practicing with small irons," says Aadil's father Harinder Pal Singh Bedi.
Watch video at age 4:: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIhl0Ato5ZY.
Aadil developed his love for golf matches and golf shots. Aadil’s mother suggested that if they should consider shifting to Chandigarh as Aadil had started persisting about playing the game. His parents therefater ordered his first putter and seven-iron. He then started playing golf for the first time at the age five, and amusingly started playing full 18-hole with just one club and a putter. He started to enjoy golf so much that from discussing each and every detail regarding the course, rules, weather, direction, he even started collecting old and new movies about famous legends in golf. Then began the golf holidays from Mumbai to Kolkatta to Bangalore every year even well before he started playing IGU golf circuit at age of six.
"Teaching Aadil golf was always competitive as his par was 8 on par 4 and 6 on par 3. When he shot par it meant that he won one bottle of coke. 2 put on the green meant his stats were good and 3 put meant his putting needed some more improvement. He participated in his first IGU match at the age of six, it was a three-day match in the hot month of July, 2007. He insisted to play all 18 holes and ended up finishing dead last in 11-year-old category. He came home discouraged and cried that he wasn’t able to beat any of the “big boys”. This came as an inspiration and an aim for him for future. He started practicing even harder in putting and chipping from then on. At the age of seven he played all 10 matches in the IGU circuit and finished 8th in national ranking. The following year he again worked harder and finished 5th in national ranking. At the age of nine he ranked number 2 in India. And by the age of 10, his hard work paid offas his he became number 1 rank in Indian golf circuit in D category," informed his father.
During his years of playing golf from the beginning, Aadil’s competitive attitude was not only limited to the national circuits, but he left no stone unturned to play international matches as well. He started competing in international golf matches as well. His first match was in Hongkong at the age of seven, followed by his second match in Sydney. His unique shots, his performances and his ranks made him qualify for the world cup at San Diego, California, USA and finished in top 40. Albatross then took him to Thailand to play True Vision Junior Golf Match where his three member team finished as runner ups. When he turned eleven, he qualified for British Junior Masters at Scotland and finished in top ten there recently.
Not only participation in national and international golf matches has become his passion, but due to his extensive travelling, Aadil has also tamed his hobby of collecting cap markers and flags of different countries he has played in. He is maintaining a diary of all the 40 courses he has played sharing his scores and unique experiences on every different course. Along with writing a diary he has developed interest in photography of birds while playing and capturing the wilderness of nature. During his free time cricket, swimming, chess and football are the sports that he watches for relaxing. His little cupboard at home includes golf movies, golf rules, dvd's regarding history and development of golf. Apart from this he loves to watch biography of great legendary players like Bobby Jones, Jack Nicholas and all time great Tiger Woods. He also writes important advises and instructions given to him during his training by his psychological coach Irina Singh, and Jesse Grewal.
Aadil has now entered in C-category (eleven-thirteen years) in national IGU Circuit. His first match, which he won, for this category was Rajastan Junior Golf held at Jaipur and finished 2nd runner up at Haryana Junior Golf championship, Gurgaon. Out of the five matches he played three matches due to which he secured 3rd ranking in IGU merit list. Since a total of ten matches will be played throughout the year and best six will be counted, rest of the matches will be started in October. Aadil is eagerly waiting to give a tough fight to his fellow golfers on the course of the IGU circuit.
CGA President, CSR Reddy, IPS, believes that kids like Aadil Bedi are role models for other children displaying perseverance, courage to fight, achieving higher goals, and establishing higher standards in the game of golf as well as other kids aiming to become good sportsmen. He further added that Aadil shot very low score on golf course which was unheard in the past and CGA has and always will support many other kids aspiring for golf and lead them to a perfect career in golf.
