The Eagle Hunter Cafe is a humble effort to make golf much more accessible to those who either want to pick up the sport, or those who want to become better golfers. A major roadblock in people picking up golf is the lack of accessibility to courses. There are barely a hundred courses in India … another hundred odd are run by the Armed Forces without civilian access. Gaining membership to a golf course is prohibitively expensive for most people, and even if one can afford to pay the astronomical fees, the waiting period is very long in most cases.
Eagle Hunter Cafe is a facility that brings golf indoors. Not only is it a driving range but also has a simulator enabling you to analyse your shots … carry distance, total distance, spin axis, laterla deviation, vertical deviation and a whole lot more. Moreover, you can play on more than 42,000 courses around the world … all within the comfort of an air conditioned environment.
The facility is particularly beneficial to beginners who want to first try out the sport, hit a few balls, and figure out whether they want to pursue the sport. For middle and low handicap golfers this facility provides an opportunity to improve their game by dialing in the numbers. Eagle Hunter Cafe is a place where you can have a good time without having to worry about whether it is cold or hot or raining. Or even worry about the time of day. Eagle Hunter Cafe is open (almost) all day, from six in the morning till midnight.
Come over to the Cafe and become a better golfer. By the way, the coffee is on us!
The reason behind Eagle Hunter Cafe
Eagle Hunter Cafe is my effort to get back into golf after a gap of nearly four decades. I started playing golf while in Bangladesh in the early to mid 1980s and became quite good at it, playing to a handicap of 12. However, once I came back to India, other things took over and golf was relegated to memory. However, it is such a wonderful sport and one can never forget the elegant flight of the ball after a perfect drive down the centre of the fairway, the smell of the grass as one walks the course, the sound of the ball as it falls into the hole, the anxiety when trying to get the ball out of a particularly bad hazard, the grit of the sand in the mouth as the ball flies out of the bunker and lands a few inches from the hole, all wonderful memories. In fact, I not only still have my 40-year-old set of McGregor clubs, I continue to play with them.
Anyway, the Covid pandemic ensured that everyone was forced to be cooped up at home. This was one opportunity to dust the clubs, bring them out and see if the shaft would crack after being put to the use it was manufactured for. Delightfully, it performed as it did so many years ago. I got myself a practice net and started hitting balls in my basement. When I did that with a 9-iron, the ball missed the net, ricocheted off the ceiling and broke a few picture frames that were put up on the wall. The practice net did not seem to be doing the trick. I needed a larger practice area. A couple of experiments later, I came up with the current design that is working beautifully. This is perfect and rivals many designs that are far more expensive.
The facilities
The Eagle Hunter Cafe in Chittaranjan Park, New Delhi is the first Cafe, hopefully one of many that will come up around the country over the next few months. We have one hitting bay with an impact screen about ten feet wide, a ceiling height of about nine feet and six feet deep side walls. The hitting mat is about twelve feet away from the impact screen giving enough space for the radar based launch monitor we plan to install to study the ball flight and provide data to improve our game. There is also a putting mat. It is a flat mat without any breaks. It is fast, with almost Pro level stimp.
We are also tying up with professional golf coaches for those of you who either want to learn the game from scratch or for those who want to improve their overall game to lower your score.
The Cafe is air conditioned, warm yet muted lighting, a couple of bean bags, and a few chairs to watch your friends play. We are not baristas, far from it, but we do have a water heater, a jar of instant coffee, tea bags, powdered milk and sugar cubes … grab a mug of coffee while you are at the Cafe. Talking of mugs, there are some beautiful coffee mugs focussed on golf that you can purchase.
Watch some videos
