We’re live and interactive on ModGolf LIVE! Ask host Colin Weston and guest Lathika Krishna anything about what it’s like to play US collegiate golf and the state of the game in her home country of India.
BONUS: there will be a #modgolfgiveaway contest! Sign up to our ModGolf Patreon community as a monthly members and you’ll be entered every week for a chance to win some awesome golf gear.
join us at – www.patreon.com/TheModGolfPodcastwithhostColinWeston
[Music] [Music] hello everyone welcome back to mod golf live on YouTube gosh I can’t believe we’ve been doing this for almost two months now trying to be regular about this I’ve learned in entrepreneurship consistency is important it’s not glamorous but it is the way to go and uh yeah I think this is our sixth mod golf live that we’re doing and and today I’m really excited to have a guest on a young woman that I just met uh a month or so ago on LinkedIn in a couple conversations that we’ve had because uh I really want to make golf as inviting and welcoming and diverse as possible that I can through the platform that I have here and I I noticed uh part of that diversity piece is like you know what I haven’t had anyone under the age of 25 on the show on the podcast in uh in almost six months it’s like you know what I have to change that and today we are doing just that and uh and that young woman is uh AA Krishna who is a division one scholarship golfer actually playing out of uh Long Island University so D1 golf uh in the US but it’s a little more interesting than that because she is a citizen of India and she’ll be joining us she’s actually on summer break and in India right now middle of the night right now so she stepped up uh deprived herself of some sleep and will be joining us in a moment but before we get going on that uh going to open up the show with uh something that we came up with last week and uh and that was uh since I’m in Vancouver still morning it’s 900 am here Pacific time so it is the morning so we’re gonna do something uh we’re calling colins Monday morning musings so what am I musing about what am I thinking about a little bit well you know things that have gone on in golf over weekend or maybe the last month or you know since we last saw each other here and one thing I wanted to talk about is you know how golf can kind of kind of mirror life in a way it’s like how do we handle our emotions how do we uh react to adversity on the golf course and some setbacks and I did not notice that on during the rocket mortgage PGA Tour event uh during the last round that Cameron young snapped his driver out of anger with five holes left and he was in contention at the time and under the uh the rules of golf if you break a piece of equipment and uh you can replace that unless it is done in anger in that case it was so he had to play the last five holes without his driver and that was not good for him because the last three holes he ended up going uh bogy par bogy ended up finishing tied for fifth or sixth so yes it really affected him and I can relate to that myself as a 15 handicapper so I’m usually shooting you know around 90 breaking 90 most of the time and last week at a golf course that last year I shot my second best round ever I shot 81 had four birdies was excited about getting back there and what did I do I shot 104 my worst round in about five years lost seven balls uh had 42 putts you know nothing was going right out there but that’s Golf and that’s life so uh that’s my musing for today it’s like you know what just you know get back up brush yourself off went back out and hit some balls and played around yesterday and played uh played much better and enjoyed myself and just forget about it so so yeah don’t uh set yourself up for uh what you believe is Success on that particular day and I know as an entrepreneur what success is as far as the ventures that we’re doing even with the the podcast or even the live show here you know hopefully we have 20 30 50 100 people joining us you know but we may only have one or two or five but I want you to be engaged and interactive and hey on that note if you are out there joining us I do strongly encourage you to uh to in the chat to actually ask some questions here to actually put something out here today both for myself and for Letha as uh she starts to tell us about you know her experience and her journey in golf and in life uh and that’s where we’re going to go but one other thing we’re going to do here as we open up here as we love to do mod golf giveaways and may think how can I win all this free awesome golf gear in the last couple weeks we’ve given away golf gloves we’ve given away uh bad cards for good golfers uh but you have to be a patreon member here with uh us here with um uh with with Mod golf so yes I will include that link in the uh in the chat there so yeah if you become a monthly subscriber here you get all kinds of exclusive content awesome stuff you know one-on-one conversations and uh and also we love to run free stuff like I mentioned doing that with Mod golf giveaways and this week we’re going to be giving away and this is a give me proos this is an awesome ball shagger uh got right here got to hear it all full of 25 balls here love this uh this unit my good friend tin Tran out of uh out of California him and his business partner are the uh the co-founders of gim Pro saw them at the PGA show had a chat with tin uh at the at at the show for that conversation and he was nice enough to send one up for me so I am going to be doing a modol review of this on our YouTube channel in the next couple of weeks uh and we’re also going to be giving this unit away here today so uh for the giveaway here here you go so what we do is here let me remove that so you can actually see everybody there so once again how do you enter so we have uh we’ve got seven awesome people who are paid patreon members here so they’re the ones that are entered into the draw here so you can see your odds are pretty darn good at winning this gimme Pro and uh we’ve had some of these people that have already won something in the last couple couple of weeks here and they may win again and I’m going to do a random draw here and determine who the winner is and the winner is oh oh it’s Bob Wells who actually I know right here in Vancouver so Bob you are the winner of this gimme Pro so you know what this works out really well have to pack this thing up and uh and put it in the mail and send it to you I can just drop this off in person so uh props we we’ll get a picture of Bob and myself with the gimie pro in action and uh that’s what we’re going to do so uh so that’s it for my Monday morning musings for uh for this week and uh we’ll Muse again next week but now we’re going to get to the main event here and that is with my guest uh Laika Krishna who I mentioned is joining me in the middle of the night hopefully she’s uh had a cup of tea and uh heavily cated and able to uh able to stay awake here and uh and and join us and and there she is Lea welcome to mod golf live how are you thanks Colin I’m great it’s great to be on the podcast well thanks for joining me so yes from our previous conversations I just love all the great things that you were doing and as I mentioned I do my best to make golf welcoming and inviting and share that platform as diverse as possible and as I mentioned I I’m a bit guilty of not having uh anyone that’s a bit younger well it’s easy to be younger than myself with all the white and this beard here but you know to get that voice that kind of the younger voice of the game in here so I really want to get your perspective on golf life hear about golf in India the history there and the future and where it’s going I know I’m throwing a lot out there but to open why don’t you let our audience know uh uh a bit of your background in uh let’s say in golf your golf Journey when you started to play golf why don’t we start with that nice and simple why don’t you I believe you were five years old when you first picked up a golf club it’s so so tell us about about your your golf Journey there early in your life uh yes I did start playing the sport when I was 5 years old um my dad took me to a summer camp that was going on at our local club and ever since then I’ve just been hooked down at the club and just been loving the sport and I’ve seen it go through a lot of changes in the country and I’m excited to see where it goes wow nice nice so I’m G to stick with golf at India because I’m learn as far as the game growing across the world especially in countries that traditionally were not uh golf countries even though with the British influence I guess golf was something that’s uh been around for for quite some time and I believe if my memory serves right when I read the Wikipedia page that the Royal Kolkata Golf Club has been around since 1838 or something like that so gosh almost you know 180 years so there is a history of golf in India but my understanding there’s only about 200 courses and a few of those two are on military bases so access for for people in uh in India to grow the game it sounds like there’s still a lot of work to do so so tell us a little bit about that as far as the state of of golf in India uh where it is and where where it’s been and where it’s going now it’s a big question we probably spend hours on this but maybe you can give us a little bit of perspective Through Your Eyes of H the history and the present and the future of of golf in India uh yes of course um so like you mentioned rcgc is one of the oldest courses in the country and every time I play on that course it just you know takes me back you know to like maybe what it was like to play golf during that time because it’s so simple it’s a beautiful golf course and um like you said there are only about 200 courses in the country and with most them being army bases um there aren’t many public courses available to play in so I guess the reach is kind of limited to people who have access to private golf clubs and the Army golf clubs so um we would need to open up a few more um public spaces for people from all sorts of backgrounds to come in and you know just take their chances with the sport either even if it’s for fun or even if they’re looking to build a career at it but um I feel like that’s a good way to start growing the game nice nice okay got to Circle back to you it’s going to be bouncing back and forth here between your big piture things with golf in India and then also your personal Journey so tell us how you ended up from being at home in India playing golf obviously getting up through the the junior ranks how you ended up in the United States there on a golf scholarship at uh Long Island University um well given that I started playing golf at five I spent a lot of my time competing on the local circuit and even the national amateur circuit over here and um during my whole career I have sustained a lot of injuries that have taken me out of the game for a good couple months or like even a year sometimes so I think um while I was recovering from a wrist injury that took me up for a year um I kind of realized that you know this comes with any sport that happens you never know what’s going to happen you never know what an injury is going to come in take you out of the game so it is important to you know have an education and have a degree to fall back on because again like I said you just never know when something’s going to happen and take you out of the game right right interesting okay so I think there’s some people out here would love to learn a bit about what it is like a day in the life let’s say last season uh being a a a D1 athlete balancing between your academics and also playing at that Elite level so you tell us about that what what it would be like there uh let’s say a day-to-day or even let’s say uh a week in your life in the midseason what that would be like for for you when you’re when you’re competing with the team so we usually start off our mornings at 6:00 amm by working out right and early and um we usually end workouts and then go grab some breakfast before we all head off to class and um classes we usually try and schedule classes around the same time so we can practice together and learn from each other other so um we usually end classes around 2:33 in the afternoon and then we head out to the course or maybe even if it’s just a practice session but um there have been times where obviously like you are student athlete the student comes first so we would have to prioritize our class sometimes by you know sometimes you just have to schedule a class that doesn’t fit into the team’s practice schedule so um during that those times just uh we have a practice facility on campus uh equipped with a flight scope and a senut lab so um we just we just take ourselves out to the shed and you know get some practice in nice nice and what is it like uh when you’re actually traveling to an event can you tell us about that like how how do you travel around do you fly do you bus or tell us like that with a team if you’re actually going for one of the tournament events that you have during the the season so in the fall we mostly have events that are sort of closer to us so um our coach usually drives us around in the school van over there so you know we got some good vibes going in with the music and breakfast stops and all that so um and we usually uh go in straight to our practice round play a couple uh Play the full 18 and take notes of the course on our strike line books and after dinner that night we sit down with the team and sort of go through each hole um you know like cover every single area of the hole as possible and you know hear each other’s opinions about the hole and what they think would work best for them and um you know just sort of you know work on course management and plan your short shots for the next few days so and the first day we um start off pretty early in the morning as we play 36 holdes the first day and um there have been times where we haven’t been able to finish the full 36 because the sun goes down so in that case we finish up the next day with another 18 gotcha gotcha it sounds uh sounds intense but it sounds like you’ve got a real sense of a of uh comaraderie there with uh with your teammates and I’m sure a lot of them are are are good friends now so I’m sure you’re very very tight-knit group so so I wanted to ask you this if there’s what watching us live here afterwards on YouTube uh that our parents out there or even uh young people that are are Elite level golfers uh What uh what dos and don’ts or strategies uh or tips can you give uh for for uh for parents or even the the the students that are looking to become uh student athletes like yourself the possibility of getting a scholarship especially well in any sport but especially in golf what what can you tell us about your your journey and what what you’ve learned along the way I think uh one of the first steps that I did was to figure out what I was looking for in a school whether I wanted to play division one two or three depending on uh what I’m looking for in the school in terms of Athletics and academics as well and after that I sort of created a spreadsheet filled with schools I was looking at and well initially the funny thing is I was looking into D3 and D2 schools because I didn’t think I was good enough to play D1 but yeah but I mean Midway I started realized that you know I have it in me and I can’t go out there and play division one golf so um after creating a list of schools that you’re interested in um I guess the first step would be connecting with the coach um so I’ve probably sent around um 200 emails to different Co coaches with you know swing videos and resumés trackman reports and all of that and sometimes you won’t get a response and that’s okay because and even if a Coach does connect with you it’s important to you know um carry that conversation on and keep interacting with them and their teammates as well even if you haven’t committed to the school yet because you don’t want to go to a school where you don’t have a good connection with the coach and the players because you want to be on you you need to have a similar thought process to you know Bond well wow great Insight thank you for that um you and I were talking earlier before we we jumped on the show here just as far as you want to talk you talk your own mental health and and uh and the ups and downs of life and golf at whatever level as a 15 handicapper like myself which I talked about earlier with my 104 blowup there and also with yourself it sounds like you had uh during Co that was very hard on you personally there and you’re not your golf game and and and yourself so yeah tell me a bit about that as far as uh what you’re putting in place to take care of yourself and to uh and to really and and to grow and and with with your mental health so that uh you’re able to kind of progress forward and uh and be the best that you can and reach your potential yeah I guess um as a junior I didn’t really think much about the mental aspect of the game but as I started playing at an amateur level um I really saw how much of an influence it has on your game and like I said earlier you know you never know when in are going to happen you never know when they’re going to take you out so when I had the wrist injury that took me up for a year um I had a mini crisis because I didn’t know what to do with myself if it wasn’t for golf and then um I got covid around 2021 and I was completely out for 3 four months and um just wasn’t able to get out of bed wasn’t able to play wasn’t able to do much so um I guess I had a sort of identity crisis this where I didn’t know who I was without the sport given that I’ve been playing it all my life and I’ve centered my whole world around it so um I would say that it’s important to um you know sort of have a life outside the game and the game isn’t life or death um it is just a game and it should be fun and um that doesn’t mean you know you just don’t go out and compete but you compete with uh without having that big burden on your head you know if you play golf when you think it’s fun you shoot much better scores anywh who so um and then again I when I started getting back after covid I was grinding it out on the Range every single day I was on the range for 10 or 12 hours a day from 700 a.m. and I’d leave at 8:00 pm and I’d just be hitting balls just putting constantly and while that did do me good in in the sense that it helped me gain confidence um I burnt out a lot from that because the minute something would go wrong I’d immediately hop back on the Range and I’d have the mentality that I need to fix this right now so um basically I was just trying to be perfect and just trying to get every single thing right but like you said with your round last week as well it’s golf it’s just bad rounds happen sometimes and just need to accept it learn from it and move on Wow thank you for sharing that that and I mentioned to you when we were having this conversation earlier uh a guest that I had on a couple of years ago uh and people that know golf in in the US will know Michael breed he was on the Golf Channel for for many years there uh he does his own show now for for many years uh with golf instruction as a PGA Class a professional and Michael said to me on the show just because you make a bad golf swing doesn’t make you a bad person and uh I remember that and when I hit a couple of bad shots and it’s like that was such an easy shot how could I actually do that but just take a deep breath and realize you know what be kind and generous to yourself and uh sounds like you are starting to do that and like myself we’re all a work in progress here like there you know the journey never ends and but it sounds like you’ve uh recalibrated yourself with expectations and even priorities and sounds like you’re being a lot kinder to yourself than perhaps you were a few years ago yeah definitely so like I was saying I was just grinding it out in the range the whole time and I never took a day off a golf so even if I did fall sick for a week or if I you know just um had some work with school going on and I missed a day of school I’d be freaking out I would in my head I would say um I’m gonna forget golf if I don’t play for a day and I’d always be freaking out and um my coach Bambi randava helped me a lot with my mental game and you know allowing myself to give myself breaks and recover and rest so that I can play better golf early on nice nice thanks for that so so hey as it says in your uh in your title there you’re also a golf journalist so you and I also met that that also intrigued me and I leaned in and what really wanted to uh connect with you because of that not just what you’re doing as a D1 athlete so I read a couple of your articles well done very nice so uh enjoyed that so why don’t you let everybody know here what you’re doing is I don’t know if you want to call that your side hustle or your summer Hustle but you know with everything else that’s got all the balls uh you have in the air and the plates that you’re spinning you’re also writing as a golf journalist so tell us how that opportunity came about and what excites you and what you like to write about the most so um during winter break last year I kind of didn’t have much to do because the courses were sh we were snowed in so I was just looking at things I can do to grow myself and you know upscale so I ended up getting a certification in Sports Marketing from Northwestern and um just through Linkedin and doing a bit of research I did want to give back to the game here in India so I started working for um Sports K which is a media company as a golf journalist and I feel like it helps me grow a lot in the game in the sense that I get to see what other players are doing and learn from them and just observe things and you know you never know what you’re going to learn from someone so just meeting a lot of new people and reading new articles and writing New pieces that I don’t know stuff about as well that way I get to educate myself a bit more nice nice so that’s something you’re going to continue on uh during the school year it sounds like you’ve got uh you’re writing quite a bit there so obviously that’s going going fairly well yep I will be continuing during school nice nice so now I have to ask you I think I know the answer to this question already reading your bio here but uh who are your favorite golfers who inspires you uh in in golf um I mean growing up I watched tiger play a lot um you know he was one of the only players from a minority Community to you know take golf up the rankings and really you know go out there and prove his worth so um he played a massive role in my life and um in terms of Indian players as well adoke um she’s playing in the Olympics uh this year and I had the great opportunity of you know growing up watching her play golf at the same club and I learned a lot from her just observing her sometimes when I’d be taking breaks from practice I’d just sit behind her and just watch her hip balls and you know just stare at her and watch her play so um she was definitely one of the big Inspirations well I was going to ask you about adid if you actually had a relationship with her so it sounds like sounds like you do sound because she’s ranked I think around 60th in the world right now she’s definitely in the top 100 I believe yes so so yeah she has she has some game and she’s going to the Olympics so tell us about that I believe both uh there’s an Indian men’s and women’s team you’ve managed to qualify for for the Olympics in Paris that’s exciting yeah it is um at the last Olympics in Tokyo um we had such an amazing performance out there Al they finished fourth that was the closest we’ve ever come in the Olympics in terms of golf and um joining her this year will be dsha dager um she is she struggles with hearing a bit so she played in the de Olympics in 2020 if I’m not mistaken and she took home the gold at that as well so um and they’re both doing really well on the L and on the men’s team as well we have um shanka Sharma and gagan jit buer who are both winners on the European tour and I think they’re gonna do amazing this year wow so in Tokyo oh ended up that’s the place no one wants to finish is in fourth because you’re so close to that medal that Podium so maybe you can do one step better that would be amazing for Indian golf if uh if one or or both teams can bring home uh medal because you know the Olympics just the eyes are are on it so uh so yeah let me ask you this as far as the kind of the growth kind of stepping back again from your own personal Journey back to uh Indian golf where do you see some potential as far as growing the game and I’m sure there’s lots of barriers like there are in a lot of countries around the world I’m sure India is is no different um but to get um clubs into people that have less opportunity that may be disadvantaged like let let me just let me ask you that it’s like how how can you grow the game having only 200 courses I I saw that there are some pitch and Putt courses like Executives which that’s a great way to go the game as far as introducing so so what are your thoughts on that just as far as what the uh I guess it’s the Indian golf Union I believe is the governing body what so what are they doing or what can they do to make golf more accessible to people that may not even know what golf is thinking it’s all Cricket all the time but hey you know there’s other sport called golf that uh you can also play this so what are your thoughts on that as far as growing the game in India so um I grew up playing the Indian golf Union Junior and amateur golf tour and they are the leading body in India and they provide a lot of opportunities for different players to play and as well we have a couple region Regional um tournaments as well so over here we have the South Zone junior golf tour so they just have tournaments in um regularly in small places encouraging kids to come out and play and have fun and um like you said um we do have a shortage of courses and with most of them being private um the reach is kind of limited to just people who are PIV privileged enough to have access to the course and afford a membership and coaching and Equipment uh which can be really really expensive so um but at the same time I have seen a lot of growth as well in my former Academy tsg um they began as just a coaching facility but they’ve grown into being a full pledged Academy while allowing kids to stay over there where they get to learn something about independence by you know getting up by yourself doing your own cheats doing your own laundry and as well as having an education system in place as well so they don’t miss out on schooling gotcha gotcha okay oh that that’s very interesting and encouraging uh so yourself personally as far as giving back to the game I know you’re still in the middle of doing lots of things right now you may not have the bandwidth and the opportunity right now but yourself as a young woman uh is that something in the future that you would love to give back as a legacy to introduce more girls and young women to the game that not just at that Elite level to compete but even as a recreational Pursuit I think you also know that this I don’t know how it is with culture in India but definitely in North America more and more women getting introduced to the game and realizing it’s such a great way to to build your network and great for business and build community around that so so tell us about uh the future for you uh as as far as giving back to the game what is that something that uh you you’d like to do in the future yes 100% I mean um I’ve been playing at this club for 15 years of my life and um through that I’ve met a lot of people from different backgrounds and especially like you mentioned the the ladies that come into play they’re all they all form such great connections with with each other mean it doesn’t matter if you’re playing good golf or not at the end of the day they’re making good connections they’re creating bonds for a lifetime they’re making good memories and at the same time I they I was speaking to one of them the other day and they told me that um I don’t go out for scores I go out to you know just get get give my body some exercise and you know appreciate that I’m in such a beautiful course I’m like looking at the greenery and the trees and I feel like that’s something a lot of amateurs can learn from older golfers is that um you know don’t break your head over a bad shot sometimes if you hit a bad shot just look up and remind yourself that you are so grateful to be in this great place and learn from that bad shot and move on such wise advice from uh someone so young well younger than me thank you for sharing that so let’s finish up with with this as far as you and the future you’re in I believe so are you a are you a sophomore or a junior going into to uh to the next season I just finished my freshman year so I’m gonna be a sophomore sophore second year okay so tell us about what what you’re thinking for 2020 4 2025 and in be beyond that what are what are your hopes and dreams and aspirations for you in golf not only as a player but also I’m assuming I’ve got this feeling that you’d love to have a career that’s involved in golf in some way shape or form so uh so what gets you excited about golf the game and the industry and where would you like to go not only next year but uh but Beyond in your career with golf well um given that I’m on break right now I still have a month to get back to campus so I’m trying to find some tournaments to play in um throughout Asia because um the golf tour the amateur tour is currently off season over here so um I would uh love to go play a couple other events and you know just network with PE different people from the golf industry and learn about their experiences in the world and how they got to where they are and um like I said earlier I would definitely love to give back to the community and um growing up I kind of always taught that um if you want to have a career in golf there’s only one way and that’s to be a professional but um I’ve grown to know a lot of people have different careers in the industry in research and management and journalism as well so there’s so many things to do to give back to this sport love that love that so hey why don’t we finish up with that cuz I’m sure it’s middle of the night you’re probably ready for bed I’m sure you’re probably exhausted but your your energy level is high I love this this is great yep I I I’m I’m currently I’m still writing pieces right now so I’m up throughout the night anyway there you go okay well hey I’ll let you get back to your writing then um laa thank you so much for sharing uh your personal insights your journey the uh the state of golf in uh in India and where it’s been and where it’s going you’ve kind of thrown a lot of the wall here and managed to encapsulate that very very nicely for uh for our mod golf audience here so uh I have a feeling we’re going to have to have you on every once in a while maybe at the end of next season we’ll we’ll have an update here and uh and hear what’s new in your life and the uh the state of golf in uh in India and Beyond so hey laa again thank you so much for joining me today on mod golf live thank you for having me Colin and I hope to be on the show again there we go my pleasure all right you take care get back to writing and then get some sleep okay I will thank you so much Colin you’re welcome all right bye bye take care see you
