Kenyan’s that have been reigning as champions of the KCB golf tournament for the past few years will now play a vital role in the development of local professionals instead of focusing solely on the annual Kenya open tour golf or the PGA tour in South Africa.
The East African KCB golf tour with local professionals from Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, and Burundi this year will be reverting a Kenyan affair.
The reason for this is due to change of structure of KCB bank that wants to decentralize its activities so that instead of having direct funding from Nairobi, other branches across the borders will be encouraged to fund their own tours that will be known as KCB Advantage Banking Challenge.
KCB headquarters in Nairobi will be handling their own market because of the necessity to popularize local events before the tour returns to other countries in the East African region.
There have been interests in other activities so that branches in Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda will come up with events and be able to fund them directly.
The events played in the courses of Kampala, Arusha, Kenya and Kigali where seasoned Kenyan players such as Jacob Okello, Ali Kimani and others played against local professionals such as Greg sprout, Simon Ngigi, and Uganda’s Deo Akope who won the KCB East African Tour in Arusha in 2010.
KCB’s director of marketing and communications Angela Mwirigi told reporters that golfers from Uganda and Tanzania will be invited for two events to be played at the Muthaiga Golf Club on February 29 to March 3 and the Grand Finale at Nyali Golf and Country Club on August 8 to 10.
The event will feature six events with a total prize fund of Ksh6.4 million from which Ksh2.6 million will go towards administration and prizes for amateurs.
The Nyanza and Nakuru events will have a prize tag of Ksh500, 000 each, while for the Muthaiga contest Ksh1 million will be set aside for the professionals.
The grand cash prize will be Ksh3 million. The objective for the championship to grow to a level where it will attract top regional and continental golfers to Kenya as a destination for golf tourism, each country will be hosting its event supported by local branches in order to enhance regional growth both in banking and the game.
There have been mixed reactions from professional golfers over KCB’s move, some players like Anil Shah Winner of the opener in Thika told reporters, he believes this is a good move for it will not only challenge players professionally but also improve standards in the game.
Leave a Reply