Into the wintry darkness, SSP Chowrasia turned around from the still-clamouring well-wishers and clasped his hands to his face. The magnitude of it might still take time to sink in, but it was probably an assurance to his own self that it was not a fantasy. The pint-sized 29-year-old leaped out of the mass of big names in the field to win the first-ever Emaar-MGF Indian Masters. It is just the fifth European Tour victory for an Indian, and of course, the first on Indian soil.Along with the prize cheque of $416,660, Chowrasia will have a three-year exemption on both the European and Asian tours for three years. The Kolkata boy, still flirting with top 20 finishes on the Asian Tour, will now have a much wider playfield and a much fancier CV. What it does to the sport in the country is anybody’s guess. On the last day’s journey on the DGC greens, Chowrasia played flawlessly. A round of five-under 67 - that gave him an overall 9-under 279 - was written with five fabulous birdies, no bogeys and a lot of grit. As the names on the leaderboard started their fluctuations, he kept the smile on to walk away a two-shot winner from Ireland’s Damien McGrane.The story of his round was written in the front nine. If he had any nerves in the morning, the approach shot on the first hole didn’t show it. He landed a foot to the pin with his third shot on the par-five to start with a birdie. And if anyone had thought that his chip out of the bunker birdie yesterday was a fluke, he gave an action replay today. Chipping from the rough over the bunker, he holed it again to go into joint lead.Overnight leader Raphael Jacquelin was in trouble early, dropping shots on the third and the fourth. And with another flawless putt on the par-four fourth to sink his third birdie of the day, Chowrasia grabbed sole lead and then just didn’t let go of it. Chowrasia had come close twice before, finishing second to Arjun Atwal in the Indian Open of 1999, teary-eyed after the play-off loss to Jyoti Randhawa in 2006 and sheepish after a technical blunder when leading the Mercuries Taiwan Masters a few weeks before that. “1999 was just a fluke,” he said later today, “but after 2006, I had really wanted to win something at the DGC. That it will be something this big, I’d never imagined.”The journey from being chased off as a kid by guards at the Royal Calcutta Golf Club to the gallery of thousands chasing him today at the DGC will now be punctuated with a ticket to the league of history-makers.
