CHENNAI: With Anirban Lahiri's place on the PGA Tour for the upcoming season secure thanks to a T46 at the Wyndham Championship last week, the 34-year-old is a mighty relieved man. What's more, he will also be in action at the FedEx Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2018. In a press conference before the Northern Trust FedExCup Playoffs, the $9.5 million event beginning on Thursday, the two-time Olympian spoke about retaining his card, the year ahead and the need to have more public golf courses in India. Excerpts:
This is your sixth year on the PGA Tour. And I don't think people, at least back home, appreciate what you have managed to do. Six years on the Tour without winning even once is difficult and you managed to do it. What does it tell you about yourself?
I think what that tells me is I need to win. It's been too long... It's a big positive for me, the fact that I've kind of not played my best - I've not even been close to my best, I know that, but I've still managed to keep myself here and keep giving myself the opportunities... I really need to win. I really need to get that off my chest. I need to get that, you know, albatross off my shoulders. But I also feel like I've been through so many cycles, so many ups and downs and challenges physically, mentally, emotionally. Being away from home, beginning to make this Tour and this place my home, a lot has happened. So, to that extent, I feel like I'm in a good place right now with my game and with everything else. Hopefully, this next season will be the season when I finally get my first win.
Can you just give us an understanding and an appreciation of what finishing 122nd in the FedExCup means when compared to maybe first or second in the Korn Ferry Tour finals (it's the PGA Tour's developmental or feeder Tour)?
It's a very big difference. I know you understand a lot of it, but I'll answer it as briefly as I can. I think eligibility is a very, very big criteria on the PGA Tour. There are a lot of different kinds of statuses that you could have. Obviously, if you won a tournament, that's the ideal status because that guarantees you every start more or less, and then like I said, we're in the playoffs. The deeper you go into the playoffs, the better you finish on the FedExCup, the better your eligibility for next year.
But if you do make it into the top 125, which is your question, you're almost guaranteed to play all the full-field events. When I say full-field events, it is barring the invitationals, which is Bay Hill, the Genesis, and Memorial, and also the CJ and the ZOZO Cup, which are the other two short field events. So, outside of these five events, you're pretty much-guaranteed entry into every other event, including The Players Championship, which is almost like a fifth major.
Whereas if you are, say, even third or fourth from the Korn Ferry category, which comes in two or three categories after 125, if you don't play well in the early part of the season, which would be September through the end of November, you could find yourself in a situation where you may get 10 or 15 fewer starts compared to where you would be even if you were the last guy from the 125 category.
So, the biggest difference for me personally, having been on the other side of the fence, is I can actually plan a schedule, actually know that I'm going to be eligible and I will be able to enter a lot of the events.
How excited are you to make the playoffs? You did mention that a bit in answer to an earlier question, but if you could answer how important are the playoffs and how excited are you to be back in the playoffs?
Thrilled. I think the playoffs are basically we're grinding, we're doing our best. Obviously, we're trying to win, that's the main goal, but the second goal outside of that is to make sure you get in the playoffs. It basically means I get to have a job next year for sure. It means I get to improve on my year. You can have an average year and just about make it to the playoffs, and then if you play really well in these next two or three weeks, that could be the difference between an average year and one of the best years of your career.
So, basically, these next two or three weeks are probably, after the majors, the most important weeks in the year for all of us who play on the PGA Tour because it defines and determines what next year looks like, what opportunities you're going to have, and you know where you would classify your year as a success or a mediocre year or a poor year.
You were cheering on Aditi Ashok during the Olympics. In one of your tweets then, you made a comment about getting more public course events and more support. Do you think this is the right time, the right moment...
I don't think there's ever a bad time with - there's a whole conversation about public courses and public driving ranges. It's been going on now for easily over a decade. I've been a pro myself now for, well, 14 years, starting my 15th year now, and really haven't seen any more ranges or public courses that have come up.
I understand there are a lot of other challenges. There's a lot of premium to real estate and what we need to use it for. We have a lot of other challenges in our country, and I'm totally respectful of that, but it doesn't take a lot to have a small driving range. Liberty National (National Trust is being held at Liberty National which is in New Jersey) itself, if you look at the history, was built on what used to be a garbage dump, and we have another couple of golf courses in America where we've had PGA Tour events, which has a similar history. So what's stopping us from maybe doing that? There is a lot of scope for us to be able to take waste areas or areas that are not going to really be of prime usage and convert it into something that can be constructive and meaningful for sport in general, and golf is one of those sports.
So, the fact that there were so many eyeballs on golf, thanks to Aditi, the way she played, the fact that a lot of people were talking about it and a lot of politicians and government officials were congratulating and waving about it, which I'm so glad to see. I'd love to see some action being taken towards having more of us, more athletes and other people who could go ahead in the future Olympics and do something meaningful for the country. We all know what a medal at the Olympics means to our country, but we also need to be able to develop on a grassroots level.
You and I can't do as much at the grassroots level as the authorities can. So my tweet and my plea were more to do with that because there are opportunities. We don't have to make 400 acres sprawling luxury golf courses, but you could make three small ranges in areas that we have land that's not going to be used for something else, that nobody's stopping us from doing that, but somebody needs to take the initiative.
Day 1 of the Northern Trust FedExCup Playoffs will be live on EUROSPORT HD from 11.30 pm on Thursday