Bangladesh golf's coming of age
Six years ago when two private banks joined hands to finance an event of the Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI) at the Kurmitola Golf Club (KGC), it was hailed as the biggest ever professional golf tournament in the country. Two years later the KGC hosted a leg of the Asian Development Tour (ADT), with auspices from another corporate house. This time the prize money went a few notches higher.
But even back then hosting a full Asian Tour (AT) event was not on anyone's immediate agenda. Organisers of those events would struggle for words when they were asked as to whether hosting an AT event in near future was possible.
But in these six years a few good things have happened in the country's golfing arena, not just on the field, but off it as well. Jamal Hossain Mollah, a 24-year-old amateur in 2009, beat some big names in the Indian professional circuit to win the PGTI event. The next year Siddikur Rahman won the Brunei Open, the first of his two AT titles, before racing to victory at the ADT title at home in the following year. Jamal then grabbed the title of the fourth edition of the PGTI event in 2012, this time as a pro, while Siddikur clinched his second AT title in Delhi the following year.
As we know success and finance go hand in hand. These success stories kept the interest of the corporates firmly on the game and its protagonists. The Bangladesh Golf Federation and the KGC, on their part, kept the good work by giving the underprivileged a chance, grooming the talents and making the administrative side of the game more professional. As a result, what seemed like a distant dream in 2009 has become a reality in 2015. The Asian Tour, or the Players' Tour as it is branded, has finally come to Kurtmitola in the form of Bashundhara Bangladesh Open (BBO).
The newly-built clubhouse at the KGC is somewhat symbolic of the changing face of Bangladesh golf. It's a massive, modern and all-encompassing establishment with state-of-the-art facilities, catering to the demand of golfers of different ilk, which is a far cry from the old-styled one which stood there for decades until recently.
Likewise, the game has embraced a wider array of golfers and has been championed by the once-ball-boys and the once-caddies. And these golfers' perseverance has been rewarded by the BBO, which gives a unique chance to 30 local golfers to rub shoulders with some of the best of Asian circuit, and more importantly, a shot at earning a card for the tour calendar, which they would have hardly had otherwise.
The 300,000-dollar event will pit stalwarts of Asian golf like Thaworn Wiratchant, a record 18-time AT winner, in the same plane as Sajib Ali, a young and promising Bangladeshi golfer who just turned pro this March. And there will also be Shakhwat Hossain Sohel, Jakiruzzaman, Liton Howlader, Mohammad Nazim, amateur Afnan Mahmud thrown into the mix with Rashid Khan, Marcus Both, Rahil Gangjee and Mithun Perera.
Who knows, maybe an unheralded professional or even an amateur will hold aloft the gold-plated trophy come May 30, like the way Jamal did six years ago! That will be another big leap for Bangladesh golf.
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