Burdett Trophy Golf on Sunday

Richard DWIGHT

The annual golf tournament for the Burdett Trophy between the Royal Colombo Golf Club (RCGC) and the Nuwara Eliya Golf Club (NEGC) takes place this Sunday at the NEGC.

This healthy competition between these two long standing well established clubs has, barring the years during the war, been well sustained to be spoken of as the oldest golf tournament to be conducted in Sri Lanka.

During the past 107 years the tournament has alternatively been held at either the RCGC or the NEGC as the case may be. The NEGC is captained by M. Balendran while the RCGC is led by Lal Dias. As in the previous years the cream of Sri Lanka golfers will enter the fray and a keen competition is expected. The tournament on Sunday will commence at 7.00 a.m. it will be made up of 8 single matches and 4 foursome matches, with a new addition this year of a masters competition as well. RCGC has won the Burdett Trophy on 61 occasions (inclusive of last year’s victory whilst the NEGC has won it 28 times. Concurrently on along with the Burdett Trophy will be the 125th anniversary cup and the Puffin Cup.

125th Anniversary Cup

The 125th Anniversary Cup golf competition came into being in the year 2004, as a commemorative event on the Club’s 125th year and, is yet again between the RCGC and the NEGC. This year is the sixth anniversary of this tournament. A fair array of golfers from each club will participate in this tournament played under match play.

Puffin Cup

The Puffin Cup is the Oldest Ladies golf tournament between the NEGC and the RCGC Ladies section. The RCGC ladies team is captained by Manori Jayakody and the NEGC Ladies team is led by Usha De Silva. This is a keenly contested competition by the Lady golfers of Sri Lanka.