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Local professional golfers return to action this week following the 2019 Magical Kenya Open golf tournament at Karen Country Club two weeks ago.
At least 29 of them had by Tuesday afternoon listed their names to play in the second leg of the “KCB Road to Karen Masters series’’ at the par 71 Nyali Golf and Country Club in Mombasa.
Professional Golfers of Kenya (PGK) captain John Wangai was, however, expecting more players to confirm their participation by Wednesday when the draw is done.
The pros, who missed the first leg of the five-event series held at Sigona Golf Club on February 25, will be playing 36 holes from Friday with the second round on Saturday to serve as a Pro-Am where they will be joined by amateur golfers from the Coast region.
Those who have confirmed participation include the long-hitting Dismas Indiza and Muthaiga’s Greg Snow who both missed cut narrowly during the Magical Kenya Open.
Also in the list is Golf Park’s David Wakhu, Riz Charania from Windsor, Royal Nairobi’s Eric Ooko and the two players who managed to finish in the money list during the open, Simon Ngige of Thika Sports Club and the Great Rift Valley Golf Resort’s Justus Madoya.
At stake for pros will be a prize fund of Sh500,000 which is part of the Sh2 million that the Kenya Commercial Bank has committed for four events the pros will be playing to prepare them for the Sunshine Tour sanctioned Karen Masters to be held from June 25 to 30.
The amateurs will be battling it out for six slots available for them in the Karen Masters Pro-Am, in addition to some take away prizes.
Captain Wangai thanked KCB for including the pros in the series this year, saying it will help the local pros prepare for the Masters which is the first Sunshine Tour event in East Africa.
A big number of the events in the Sunshine Tour are held in South Africa and countries like Zambia, Zimbabwe and Swaziland.
“The series gives us an opportunity to sharpen our skills well in time for the Sunshine Tour Karen masters event. The good thing is that we will not rest after the Kenya Open as golfers will proceed to Nyali for play. We missed out in the first round of the KCB series in Sigona because it coincided with Safari Tour. We are overly excited to be back in the Road to the Masters,” said Wangai.
During the first leg at Sigona, handicap 20 amateur golfer Sabo Kalsi led the first batch of Pro-Am qualifiers after scoring an impressive 41 points made up of 21 points in the first nine and 20 at the back nine, beating a huge field of 204 players.
Other Masters Pro-Am qualifiers from Sigona were men winner Ishwar Aldasani (24), guest winner Lee Mungai (22), staff winner Ogola Azu (26) who is also the KCB Bank Kenya HR Business partner and lady winner Milka Mburu playing off handicap 26.
The sixth qualifier from the Club was Jolly Esmail, who became the first player in this year’s series to win a wildcard.
The wild card was decided from a lucky dip conducted on all the score cards returned by the playing field.
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