Rusi Captain RCGC's golf champ

by Richard Dwight

Rusi Captain, who through the years, has at one time or another been the golf champion of the Royal Colombo Golf Club (RCGC) - took the top spot, when last Sunday at the RCGC he beat Mithum Perera in the club's annual championship final.

Rusi has thus intermittently though, done well enough, to have now won this title for the 10th time. The 126-year-old RCGC steeped in history and tradition, with a culture of its own, had its first club championship in the year 1914. In that year the club championship was open to members, with a handicap of 9 or less, and had 20 competing.

Pin Fernando a name, for more reasons than one was synonymous with Sri Lankan golf. He was the dominant force to the extent that since winning the club's championship in 1950, he went on to win it on 19 occasions and, did as well win yet other competitions held here and abroad. Rusi is not far behind, and does appear to be closing in on that record of Pin's.

This year's championship on the match play format and the finals played over 36 holes, was held over two weekends viz: Saturday and Sunday 15 and 16 and continued on Saturday 22 and Sunday 23. From the preliminaries to the lead up to the quarter final stage, those in contention were Mithum Perera 8/7, Sirinivas Rao 3/1, Alain Gyi - 1 up, Stewart Ritchie 3/2, Rusi Captain - 18th, N. Hettiaratchy 4/3, R. Abhayaratne w/o and B. Wijesinghe w/o.

The scores are reflective of their victories against their respective opponents in the preliminary round to the quarter-final stage.

Mithum Perera, Alain Gyi, Rusi Captain and B. Wijesinghe got past the quarter-finals to do well to move over to the semi-finals.

In the semi-finals Mithum Perera got the better of Alain Gyi 5/4 and in the other semi-final, Rusi Captain pulled off the match against B. Wijesinghe 4/3.

The championship concluded on Sunday with youngster, Mithum Perera taking on the reputed Rusi Captain in the final. The contest progressed in a fairly even keel, with both golfers nudging each other to be as competitive as possible and it was the skilful play and experience of Rusi that enabled him with 1 up to clinch the championship.