It was 2005, and Tiger Woods was about to win his second Open, at St Andrews. Shubhankar Sharma, who was 9 years old at the time, was up past his bedtime in India, watching the American for the first time on television. That, Sharma says, is when his admiration for the golf legend began. And on April 5, two of his dreams will come true: He will make his debut at the Masters Tournament, and he will compete against Woods.
Sharma has had an impressive 2017-18 season. He has climbed the rankings from 571 in November to 68 in March, after victories at the Joburg Open and the Maybank Championship and top-10 finishes in numerous championships. Now the 21-year-old will become only the fourth Indian to compete in the Masters (the others are Jeev Milkha Singh, Arjun Atwal and Anirban Lahiri).
We caught up with Sharma ahead of his trip to Augusta to get his take on this eventful stretch.
ESPN: You got the phone call from Augusta on your way home from the World Golf Championships in Mexico. You said you have dreamed of that call for a long time. Walk us through it.
Shubhankar Sharma: I had gotten an email from [Walton L.] Buzzy Johnson, who is the senior director at the Masters Tournament, saying he was trying to contact me. I was in flight at the time and couldn't contact him, but when I landed and saw the email, he'd mentioned a particular time when I should call him back. [The time] was roughly two hours after I landed. ... I called him back, and we spoke for about five minutes. He said, "We have decided to extend you an invite for the Masters." I had a few friends with me -- and I told everyone.
ESPN: Rory McIlroy invited you to join him for a practice round leading up to Masters. What would you want to achieve out of the practice session?
Sharma: I haven't met Rory until now. He's won four majors and is a great player, so it will be great to play with a guy who is contesting at the highest level of golf. I think he is very relaxed on the course. He doesn't really get too hard on himself. That's the best part because this is a game where you can really get hard on yourself. I have to play for -- hopefully -- the next 25 to 30 years, and to be able to do that, you have to be as relaxed as possible. It'd be good to learn that quality from him.
ESPN: You've had a great run these past few months. What did you do differently over the course of the year?
Sharma: I think it was the same process I kept following this past year and even before that. I think golf is a game where you mature in every aspect of the game, and I think that's what happened with me at the end of the year. I was practicing well and started very well at the beginning of the year: I had four top-10s in a row. After August, something clicked and I won in Chandigarh and in Joburg and then won again in India and Malaysia. I think I kept doing my drills, and I was so involved in the process that everything fell into place.
ESPN: When you reflect on your success in the past few months, what memory stands out and why?
Sharma: Winning Joburg last year was one of the best things that happened. Before that I had won once in Chandigarh, which was in the Indian tour, but I hadn't won internationally. It's always tough to win abroad because conditions are different and you have to adapt very quickly. Winning Joburg opened up a lot of things for me. I always believed that I could win -- but to do it is another thing. And once I'd done it, things really changed. I felt like I belonged there, and that I could win in the highest stage in golf. I felt a lot more confident.
ESPN: You're only the fourth Indian to play at Masters. What would you want up-and-coming players in India to learn from your experience?
Sharma: I'd say that the only thing I've been consistent with is my practice and my hard work. You don't have a team where even if you don't play well, you might win and you can always bask in the glory of the team. In golf, everything is on you. You have to keep practicing and learning every day. It is a very technical game, so you have to keep notes. It's a lot of work which you do over the years and it culminates -- it all falls into place -- when you mature as a player. You start shooting low scores, which will win you tournaments.
ESPN: Who did you look up to when you first started playing golf, and what does it feel like to know that kids in India are looking up to you?
Sharma: When I started golf, my biggest inspiration was Tiger Woods. Back home in India, we had our own heroes like Jeev Milkha Singh, Arjun Atwal, Jyoti Randhawa. I used to go for tournaments in India and watch them play.
For a sport to grow in India, you really need heroes to go out there and perform. It gives kids confidence that they can do it as well. I guess when I saw Arjun in a PGA Tour and Jeev in Asia multiple times -- he won twice in Asia and four times in Europe -- that gave me a lot of confidence. Recently when Anirban [Lahiri] did so well, I had already turned pro then, but it pushed me even more to go out there and express myself and try and play my best.
ESPN: You played soccer, basketball, golf and cricket growing up, and your father encouraged you to pick golf. And at 12 to 13 years old, you knew you wanted to play professional golf. What drew you to the sport, and how did you know you wanted to make a career out of it?
Sharma: Golf was a very different sport; nobody in my family knew very much about golf. It was always cricket and soccer. I was very inquisitive -- I wanted to know how the sport worked. When I started playing, I got drawn to it. The deeper I went, I came to know more about it. I used to read a lot about golf. I started playing at around 7, and by 12 or 13, I was spending a lot of hours on the golf course. I knew this is what I wanted to do; I wanted to become a pro. Going for tournaments, watching Tiger play -- these things helped me in making my decision. I was No. 1 in my category in under-10 and under-13, so I knew I was playing well, and I had it in me. It didn't take too much time for me to decide I wanted to play golf and take it up as a career. I was pretty firm about it when I was 12, and I ended up turning pro in 16.
ESPN: You said recently that though this is a huge step for Indian golf, there is still a lot of work to be done to match the international golf standards. What do you hope to accomplish in the next year or two?
Sharma: I want to get my card on the PGA Tour. How I make it is what I don't know. I might win; I might have consistent finishes. I want to keep doing my process right. I want to keep practicing. If you told me last year at this time that I'd be playing on the PGA Tour, that I'd be playing the Masters, I wouldn't have thought too much about it. If you play well, if you get the right breaks, anything is possible. You can jump a lot in the world rankings. A win on the PGA Tour will be fantastic.
ESPN: Obviously you are on the road a lot. What do you do to stay connected to your home in India?
Sharma: You travel every week. You finish a tournament on Sunday and you move onto another on Monday. It's tough, but I keep talking to my parents and sister back home. I talk to them pretty much every day. I think it is very important for me to stay connected with them because sometimes it can get lonely on tour and you always want to talk to someone and share your thoughts. Sometimes Dad comes out to tournaments. My whole family is coming out to watch me at the Masters.
ESPN: What did you have to give up when you decided to pursue golf?
Sharma: When I started playing golf, I was pretty young. I was still trying to figure out what I liked to do. I liked playing other sports as well. I think the earliest memory I have was this: My dad was in the [Indian] army, so when I was a kid, I remember thinking I wanted to join the army. When I started playing golf, I got addicted to it and felt like this was the thing for me.
ESPN: The Masters is the biggest tournament of your career so far. How have you prepared yourself for the moment?
Sharma: I have been playing tournaments every week. Playing is the best practice. Getting yourself ready with competition golf is the most important thing. I have been working on different aspects of my game every day.
Augusta is one course where it doesn't really matter who I play with. The course is bigger than all the players. It is such an iconic place -- I'd be happy to go out there and play. Hopefully by the time I get there I will be totally prepared and ready to go.