Junior golfers tee off from Dec 15-17

Richard Dwight

The tee box, fairways and greens of the Royal Colombo Golf Club (RCGC) will swing into action shortly when the enthusiastic, up and coming youngsters pit their might against each other to vie for the Sri Lanka Junior Golf Title.

This annual golf championship is organized and conducted by the Sri Lanka Golf Union (SLGU) and sponsored by Prima Bread for the third consecutive year. The Junior Golf Championship starts on Wednesday, December 15 and concludes on Friday, December 17, with play confined to the morning's of each day. The tournament is open to both boys and girls under the age of 18 years and, has assumed a measure of importance, in that it serves as a platform for the SLGU to identify potential talent to play at the national level, not forgetting the role of the media to inspire and encourage the youngsters through publicity.

These observations were made by the President of the SLGU, Lalith Ramanayake, at a briefing held at the RCGC on Wednesday. Present on the occasion was the General Manager, Prima T S Shun, who said that his company was pleased to sponsor the event for the third successive year, and that it was honoured to be associated with a championship that had a history of 35 years.

At the briefing were also Senior Marketing Manager Prima, Sajith Gunaratne and the Vice Captain of RCGC, Sanjiv Vairvanathan.

The competition will be based on the stroke play format and will proceed according to the following age groups viz; 15-17 (Gold Division) age group 11-14 (Silver division) and age group 10 years and under (Bronze Division).

The overall winner will be determined by the best aggregate score registered at the end of 3 days and 3 rounds of golf.

Some of the former champions in Mithun Perera, Lalith Kumara and Sachin de Silva were present at the briefing - yet other former champions were Thuashini Selvaratnam, Binupa Wijesinghe, Tissa chandradasa and many more. This year's competition will have around 60 junior participating.