Larry Ngala
5 September 2008
Nairobi — The 2008/2009 Johnnie Walker Golf series enters its third week at Vet Lab Sports Club on Saturday.
A field of 145 players will fight it out for the 10 slots available to the club in the national finals set for Royal Nairobi Golf Club next January 17.
Like the Festival of Golf at Railway, also this morning, the Johnnie Walker qualifying round at Vet Lab, or Kabete as it is popularly known, was meant to combine players from Golf Park, Machakos and hosts Vet Lab.
However, only Vet Lab members and a handful of Golf Park players were drawn from 6am this morning. Machakos players decided from the launch of this year's series that they would not honour any qualifying event held outside Machakos.
"We are the only golf club in the whole of Eastern Province and over the years we have always qualified at home, I see no know reason why we should be taken to other clubs to qualify," said Machakos Golf Club chairman Swaran Singh during the official launching of the ongoing series.
This year only 12 clubs -- Nyeri, Eldoret, Vet Lab, Njoro, Railway, Thika, Sigona, Nyali, Nyanza, Limuru and Karen -- were chosen to host the series being sponsored by Johnnie Walker Black Label. A total of 10 winners from each venue will qualify to play in the grand finale, where the top five will travel to Perth, Australia for the 2009 Johnnie Walker Classic Pro-Am.
Meanwhile, action in the Zain BlackBerry Golf Challenge switches to the Great Rift Valley Lodge and Golf Resort in Naivasha for the eighth event in the series.
This event will be followed by the ninth round at Nyanza Golf Club in Kisumu next weekend before action goes East to Machakos on October 25.
The last two tournaments will be hosted by Eldoret and Karen Country Club. An array of prizes, including BlackBerry phones, will be at stake at Naivasha and in the other events.
The women will be at Sigona from today for this year's Kenya Amateur Ladies Open Matchplay Championship.
As usual, the championship has attracted a small entry in all the three divisions, namely the Championship, Silver and Bronze.
Those vying for the title in the main championship include the handicap three Mary Karano.
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