-By Jaya Pathak
Golf is a game that reveals at an Indian expense what we typically conceal in Indian sport, which is the price of being in the room. It is true you can be gifted, true you can be commonplace, you can even have but a few weeks of highlight reel in your past- this is when a bad patch falls on you, and you find yourself drifting back to qualifying school, salesman again, round after round, to a game which overlooks sentimental bids. This helping, well-deserved 2026 stature of Shubhankar Sharma became an Indian golfer in Tarragona and is a pleasant reminder that Indian golf lacks nothing but desire.
And that is the reason why in Indian world, rankings are never quite proper. Is it competition of who is the most famous? Who would most likely compete on the international scale this year? Who is best in commercial attractiveness? The circles intersect in a different fashion than they did before, but still in 2026 those circles do not perfectly overlap, and this time round LIV has players scattered around that route of the DP World Tour, and the team-based ecosystem, and a grind in the LPGA and the domestic circuits holding the lights on.
Top 10 Indian Golfers:
- Shubhankar Sharma – the everything is status professional
He is an Indian professional golfer. He has been awarded Arjun award at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on 25th September 2018 by President Ramnath Kovind. That sentence- those capital letters, in a measure they are, could only read like accountancy, and in a measure they do: a round Night out of teen or forty. He was also given an official invitation to the 2026 Hero Dubai Desert Classic, his eighth consecutive appearance in the event, which makes it clear that he has retained some credibility in major areas.
- Anirban Lahiri — the outcast, who succeeded in making golf career sound natural
Authored LIV Golf Profile describes Lahiri as one of the pioneers of Indian golf and states that he won 18 professional golf events globally as well as two Olympics and two Presidents Cups (including becoming the first Indian to play it). It also records his T5 at the 2015 PGA championship as the best put in by an Indian professional in a major. However, whether you consider the existing geopolitics of tours, the business worth of Lahiri is unusually simple, he is known as a global sports asset and his timeline keeps him on the screens worldwide.
- Aditi Ashok – the mute Indian people scorecard of the LPGA
The LPGA page of Aditi displays that she is 27 years old; she first joined the LPGA Tour in 2017 and has earned official career earnings of 2.5 million, as well as 13 top-10 results. These are not “viral” statistics, but the type that a sponsor really admires, since they address continuity in an ugly league. Indian golf is set to be taken the rest of the way beyond the sporadic spurt on the radar, it must have more careers like that of Aditi: consistent opportunities, constant topicality, and the capacity to remain in the employ of the highest ranks in the sport.
- Yuvraj Singh Sandhu- the home-to-world jump that has long been deserved
Sandhu was officially invited to the 2026 Hero Dubai Desert Classic where he is bound to make his debut at the show. His rise is also linked in the same report to 7 wins in the domestic PGTI Tour in 2025 that made him obtain the DP World Tour card as the winner of the PGTI Order of Merit. This is not just important to one occasion on the field: Indian men have to play more games that can push them to global agendas by volume wins and not exception.
- Veer Ahlawat: near enough to harm and near enough to study
Week of Q-School, in which Ahlawat was in the field with Sharma, he too, missed the cut after round four, his name appeared, the name of the third Indian of six to enter that week. It can be a mere aside that not many would pay much attention to, but it is the experience that either makes a player harder or silently kills an international drive. The concept of Ahlawat, in 2026, will be in that awkward position where it is evident that the game is good, but still needs another jump to secure a passport to a larger schedule.
- Saptak Talwar- The depth indicator India had never had
Talwar also was in the Tarragona Q-School field and failed to make the cut in round four. I will not be scoring him that result any more, obviously, but what his presence symbolizes: India puts more of its basketball men into the toughest filters of the sport, as opposed to having a miracle occur back home. When a nation goes deeper, you want to know this first in who is ready to appear on qualifying and incur the bruises.
- Jeev Milkha Singh – the old man who has yet to become a legend
The contemporary position of Jeev consists in being both competitor and reference point: as an elder pro, Jeev is there to remind the rest of the world that the history of Indian golf is not a museum exhibit, it is still walking fairways. In a recent India Golf Weekly article, he has been flagged in relation to the high-level competition relevancy towards the end of 2025. Something stabilising in a career is having a veteran around an ecosystem that is obsessed with what is next and continues to prove that, indeed, craft and experience can buy you everything known as leaderboards.
- Gaganjeet Bhullar – the steel frame of the Asian circuit
Bhullar is also one of the names that keep on re-emerging again and again as a topic of discussion about Indian men winning a living, particularly in the Asian and domestic starts. He also regularly features in lists of top Indian golfers that describe the modern world of Indian professional golf. he might not consistently be the headliner in 2026; yet when you have a pastime of a player type, one who is a donor, who will not age, who is ready to play the tournament, Bhullar qualifies.
- Shiv Kapur – the adult careerist
This is why the story behind the career of Kapur can be seen as a lesson in persistence: the type of an athlete who might not have dominated the national discourse each year, yet is still an inseparable part of the professional discourse in India. He is seen as general round-ups of best Indian golfers which belie this longevity and profile. It is performance in itself to be able to live through the years in a sport in which careers can diminish fast when there are no more starts available.
- Rashid Khan – the required standard of domestic circuit
The fact that Khan will participate in the event as DP World Players Championship 2026 (as it is listed on the PGTI tournament page) is a reminder that the home events in India remain useful as anchor events in terms of competitiveness. Not all sports have as efficient an internal stratum as golf has, a sport which, at least, is merciless in this respect, and any exportation to the world scene belongs to a deeper well than a shallower one. Players such as Khan maintain that layer in between–so that next Sandhu does not have to create pressure afresh.
