Radha Sundarampillai, Mother of Junior Golf honoured with Margarette Golding Award

Mother of Junior Golf 

Radha Sunderampillai 

By Shamseer Jaleel

Radha Sundarampillai has dedicated much of her adult life to helping underprivileged and marginalised people to cope with their problems, widen their horizons and better themselves. The Junior Clinic which is now recognised as an important part of the RCGC and, after 40 years of hard work, Radha Sundarampillai has been recognised by the Royal Colombo Golf Club (RCGC) for her impressive achievement. She has undoubtedly earned the title of ‘Mother of Junior Golf’.

She has got international recognition for the work she has done at the RCGC by the Inner Wheel Club of Colombo-International award, the Margarette Golding Award.

She lived in London for many years with her husband, helping the needy in UK, before returning to Sri Lanka in 1976. Radha, who is an exceptional golfer, was invited to join the exclusive Royal Colombo Golf Club (RCGC), founded in 1886 by the British in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) where she soon embarked on what was to become the crowning achievement in her efforts to extend a helping hand to underprivileged children.

RCGC is something of an oasis in a neighbourhood characterised by poverty-stricken slums whose inhabitants’ adults and children are surrounded by the many social evils that attend abject poverty, both as victims and as perpetrators. For most of them, and especially the children, escaping from this “poverty trap” was an elusive dream.

Radha was surprised to note that there was little interaction between the Club and its immediate neighbourhood. She was also astonished to find that it did not encourage or promote golf amongst youngsters in Sri Lanka. It became her dream to create junior golf champions for Sri Lanka and to offer this opportunity to all children, irrespective of their gender, class, ethnicity or community. 

Working quietly behind the scenes, with neither help nor encouragement from other members, she used her position as Lady Captain in 1981 to popularise and promote golf amongst young people and the first Junior Clinic of the RCGC was born. As part of her long-term strategy, she approached the Royal and Ancient Golf Development Section in Scotland seeking assistance to have the children coached by fully qualified golf professionals. She also had a special practice pitching area built for their use.

In 1983 Radha and her family were victims of ethnic riots in Sri Lanka. Their family home was reduced to ashes and they lost all their possessions and were obliged to seek refuge with friends for several months. 

Yet, even during this harrowing period in her life, she continued to dedicate her efforts to bridging the gap between the privileged and the under privileged and redoubled her efforts to foster friendship and harmony across ethnic lines, even though it meant working among the very communities that had harmed her own family. 

Notwithstanding a difficult and sometimes hostile atmosphere, her persistence and diligence paid off and the new RCGC Junior Clinic continued to bring together children of different social and ethnic backgrounds on an equal footing. 

An unexpected but very welcome spin-off of her efforts was that the children from poorer families were afforded a wider world view and were encouraged to take advantage of the country’s free education system to widen their educational and career aspirations and to “dream big” in planning and achieving a better future for themselves and their families.

In addition, purely on the basis of their skill at the game, many of the underprivileged children among the junior golfers have joined their more privileged counterparts in travelling to neighbouring countries as members of the Club’s golf teams. Others have gone on to become Club and National Champions and, at present, all Golf Club and National level Champions were once students at the Junior Clinic. 

One talented girl from an underprivileged family has even become the National Lady Champion with an impressive list of golfing titles.  All the Under-15 golfers who have bested Senior Champions in the Ladies and Gents sections in the country are also graduates of the Junior Clinic created and run by Radha and two boys from less privileged backgrounds are working there as fully qualified golf professionals.