Prantor Baruah: Life in a Golf Cart

Our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: In the last few years, Assam’s Prantor Baruah has emerged as a familiar figure in the world of refereeing professional and elite amateur golf events in India.

Most recently, he was a Rules Official in the Hero Ladies Indian Open, a major Ladies European Tour Event held in October in DLF Golf and Country Club, Gurugram. Previously he had refereed a number of other men’s & women’s professional golf tournaments and continues to do so regularly.

Born in Guwahati, Baruah had a career in the tea industry until 2016. He has been a keen sportsman ever since his childhood. Though he mostly played cricket and table tennis until the 1990s, when he joined the tea industry and began playing golf. He soon developed a fascination for the rules of golf. A substantial body of rules govern the game.

Two administrative bodies, the R & A Rules Ltd.(at St. Andrews, Scotland) and the USGA (United States Golf Association) governs the sport of golf worldwide. Operating in separate jurisdictions, while USGA governs in the United States, its territories and Mexico, the R & A does for the rest of the world.

Baruah became a National “A” level referee in 2015 after successfully completing the R & A Rules exams for which he qualified after clearing the “C” and “B” level earlier in the same year. The following year he took early retirement from his job in the tea industry to become a fulltime golf referee. He was selected from India to go to Japan that year to appear in R & A’s International Rules exam which he successfully cleared and that gave him certification as an International Golf Referee and Golf Tournament Administrator.

Prantor Baruah has also been appointed as Tournament Director by Indian Golf Union (IGU) recently, after a certification programme held in Chennai on December 3.

Baruah is presently one of the 28 Internationally certified golf referees from India and only one from Assam and the North East. He says he is thoroughly enjoying his present work and the hours that he spends on a Golf Cart for days together gives him immense satisfaction.

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