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Swapping Arnold Palmer stories is a tradition like no other during the annual Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill Club & Lodge. Two-time PGA Tour winner and local resident Daniel Chopra has quite a few Arnie stories to tell. Arguably few knew the King better in his latter years than Chopra.
“We would play together a lot when he was still golfing,” Chopra said. “That was cool and I hung around."
Palmer was among the first to greet Chopra when he came off the course after his first PGA Tour victory, the inaugural Ginn sur Mer Classic at Tesoro in 2007. It was all part of the great friendship they forged together.
Chopra added his only other PGA Tour victory a few months later when he won the 2008 Mercedes-Benz Championship. Again, Palmer was one of the first to send congratulations. But Chopra always felt he should have won more. The 47-year-old is the first to admit he underachieved on the PGA Tour.
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, to an Indian father and a Swedish mother, Chopra moved to India when he was 7. He stayed with his grandfather, who would take him to Delhi Golf Club, where he still is considered a “local lad” crazy about cricket and butter chicken.
Cricket is a national obsession in India, but a mystery to most Swedes and most Bay Hill residents. Chopra has a cricket bat beside the door of his home in Orlando, Florida, and is known to check scores minutes before he tees off.
Chopra isn’t just a two-time PGA Tour winner waiting to play the Champions Tour. He has so many interests it would take ages to list them all. He loves to talk/debate, has an opinion on anything and everything, but can keep his audience entertained.
Playing a practice round ahead of the 2012 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, he had aces on the seventh and 17th holes. His prize? A lovely piece of memorabilia with two golf balls and autographs from Palmer and Clint Eastwood among five on an attached plaque.
“It is one of the coolest mementos I have,” he said.
It’s part of a varied collection worthy of any golf museum. The collection ranges from gold-plated Ping putters to 100-year-old golf clubs amidst an impressive wine cellar with bottles autographed by major champions. It also includes the car from winning the Mercedes-Benz event with “Maui 08” on the license plate.
When he begins to show off his golf clubs, shared through a video call during lockdown, he says: “This is some really old stuff and most kids out there will never recognize any of these golf clubs. There is the original TaylorMade rescue club. Then there are these wooden-headed clubs. Statistically speaking, I was the last player on the European Tour back in, like, 1997 to actually be using a wooden-headed driver.”
He moves on to his putters.
“A lot of people don’t know that as a winner on tour or (for) any major achievement that you do have, Ping will make a gold putter replica (for) the tournament that you won. So I have one from the Taiwan Open from 1995, another from the Fresh Express Classic from 2011. They (Ping) will have two putters made. One they present to the player and the other one they put in a Ping Gold Putter vault in Scottsdale, Arizona. I’ve got several of these gold putters in here with various inscriptions on them from various wins.”
He also has a putter for winning the 1994 Indian PGA Championship.
Not just putters, but drivers, wedges, golf balls, winning scorecards and so on. He still has golf bags from Tavistock Cup matches.
During lockdown, Thai golfer Jazz Janewattananond couldn’t return home and was confined to a hotel. Chopra knew the young player from the Asian Tour, and invited him and his caddie to stay at his Bay Hill residence.
“The Tavistock Cup is the only team competition I’ve ever been a part of,” said Chopra, who is now a commentator for Fox Sports. “It is a traditional tournament played here in the Orlando area between teams from Isleworth and Lake Nona (neighbourhoods), the traditional home of most of the tour players who live here in Orlando.
“We have an annual match, once at Lake Nona and once at Isleworth. I was part of the team with Tiger Woods a couple times so that was a fun event to play. Really made it feel like a Ryder Cup and we had team uniforms. We would fly across in a helicopter and arrive at the 18th fairway.”
Pride of place in Chopra’s house is his wine cellar. Wife Samantha created the collection for her husband as a birthday present some years ago. It includes premier bottles of wine made by major champions, complete with their signatures.
“I have an Arnold Palmer reserve 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon,” he said. “Obviously, that’s got his printed signature, but then he signed it for me as well. I have Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Louis Oosthuizen, Gary Player, Greg Norman, Jack Nicklaus, every one of their best bottles of wine personally signed for me. Probably, I would say only a handful of these kind of collections would exist anywhere in the world and my wife was kind enough to create one for me.”
Chopra is a generous host. During lockdown, Thai golfer Jazz Janewattananond couldn’t return home and was confined to a hotel. Chopra knew the young player from the Asian Tour, and invited him and his caddie to stay at his Bay Hill residence.
In turn, Janewattananond’s caddie made some amazing Thai food. Chopra loved it, but probably not as much as butter chicken. It always will be his favourite food. Just as he loves golf, but still can’t get enough cricket.
You can take the boy out of India, but …
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