Top golfers for Indian Masters

Jyoti Randhawa will lead a 100-strong field into the Indian Masters, by the PGA of India. This is 22nd leg of the Wills Sport Indian Golf Tour's 2000-2001 season and will be played at the Army Golf Course, Dhaula Kuan, New Delhi, from April 10 to 13. The tournament is being sponsored by the Professional Golfer's Association of India, the governing body of professional golf in India.

The event offers Rs 700,000 in prize-money with the winner getting to take home a pay packet of Rs 113,400. The runner-up prize will be worth Rs 78,400.

The initiative taken by the PGAI coming in the wake of the earlier sponsors of the tournament pulling out due to certain exigencies shows the level of their commitment towards the sport and the players in particular. A large number of players depend for their bread and butter on the Golf Tour. Keeping this in mind, the PGAI's gesture of stepping in to sponsor the tournament at such short notice, has set an example worth emulating for other similar sporting bodies. Tiger Sports Marketing, the event management company will support the PGAI cause in their role as event managers for the week and will also sponsor the amateur prizes.

The field for the event, other than Randhawa, includes such prominent golfing names as winner of the '99 Indian Open and 2000 Hero Honda Masters, Arjun Atwal; runner-up at the just-concluded SRF Open Golf Championship, Arjun Singh; current leader of the Wills Sport Golf Tour's Order of Merit Vijay Kumar; last season's Mahindra award winner Mukesh Kumar; winner of this season's HT Pro-Golf 2000 Gaurav Ghei; thrice Hero Golf Chandigarh Open winner Amritinder Singh; twice winner of the Honda-Siel PGA Championship Uttam Mundy; winner of the Wills Southern Open 2000 Indrajit Bhalotia; winner of two events each this season Shiv Prakash and Rohtas Singh; golfer in line to win the ‘Rookie of the Year’ award for the 2000-01 season Rahul Ganapathy; twice winner of the Indian Open (’91 & ’93) Ali Sher; winner of the '98 Indian Open Feroz Ali and a number of other leading golfers like Amandeep Johl, Digvijay Singh, Vivek Bhandari, Sanjay Kumar, Basad Ali, SSP Chowrasia, Harmeet Kahlon and Rafiq Ali to name a few.

While Jyoti Randhawa will be looking to win his fourth tournament on Indian soil this season, the main focus of the week will be on Vijay Kumar and Mukesh Kumar as the two big bulls of the domestic circuit lock horns in what has thus far been a fierce battle for supremacy and the year ending Mahindra award. With just a few points separating the twosome, a good performance here can go a long way in ensuring a top berth in the rankings for either of them.

Additionally, the presence of the two Arjuns, Atwal and Singh, will ensure that everybody stays on their toes. With Arjun Singh having missed out marginally on a win having to settle for second best to Randhawa at last week’s SRF Open, he will be keen to make amends here. Arjun Atwal has been in exemplary form this season and a mediocre performance at the SRF Open might prove to be just the tonic required to get him back on the tracks.

"The Army Golf Course is in excellent shape and with such a strong field for the Indian Masters we are confident that the week will produce some scintillating golf," was what Col. Abhai Singh, hony. secretary, Army Golf Course had to say.

Indeed, excellently maintained fairways and strategically placed hazards in the form of water bodies and bunkers make the course a challenge that the most hardened of pros will be keen to meet.