KOLKATA, Dec 12 - The cream of Indian golf will be seen in action in the prestigious 1.5 crore McLeod Russel Tour Championship to be played at the RCGC here from December 24 to 27.
The PGTI�s year-ending tournament will allow only the top 60 players in the Indian Tour ranking and 11 sponsors� invitees thus making a strong field of 71. The 72-hole stroke-play championship will guarantee prize money to all players with the winner set to claim? 22, 50,000.
This is the fourth year of the tournament. Significantly, all the three previous winners of this tournament � Anirban Lahiri (2012), SSP Chawrasia (2013) and Shankar Das (2014) � have some connection with the city.
Lahiri, who has been doing well in European circuit of late, will be missed this year. Chawrasia will have six top Indians, Jyoti Randhawa, Gaganjeet Bhullar, Rahil Gangjee, Rashid Khan, Himmat Rai and Chirag Kumar, for company. M Siddikur Rahman (Bangladesh), Mithun Perera (Sri Lanka), Koh Deng Shan (Singapore) and Navin Shrestha (Germany) are the four foreign entries.
The top 60 from the PGTI Tour will be identified only after the penultimate tournament, the Tata Open, at Jamshedpur later this month.
PGTI Director, Uttam Mundy, indicated that golf had picked up tremendously in this country with more than 21 players participating in the tougher Asian Tour. He said the 2016 season would see Shillong coming in as one of the venues on the tour along with the existing venues, Digboi and Jamshedpur. There were plans to get a leg to RCGC next year, he revealed.
