Tough questions for KGU golfer of the year managers

What is the future of the Kenya Golf Union Golfer of the Year Series? What role is it playing in the growth of the competitive-elite amateur golf environment?

And can the individual club events that make up the series regain their shine as the premium amateur golf events or will they continue to be seen as a nuisance?
These questions came to mind after I received the latest KGU Goty rankings, after the Sigona Bowl 2015.

I think the Sigona Bowl is essentially one of the most prestigious events on the Goty calendar and ideally winning this event should be a big deal. Adding one’s name to the roll of winners should be life-changing essentially.

But do the members of Sigona even know who the winner of the coveted Bowl is? Does he get a one year free pass to play in Sigona? Does Sigona celebrate him? In other words, does the Sigona membership care? Or has the Sigona Bowl grown into an inconvenience on what is a very busy golf calendar at Sigona?

And I am not picking on Sigona – I mean, do the members of Karen have any idea who the winner of the Karen Challenge is? Do they come out in large numbers to watch top amateurs battle? Are club members more excited about their club champions and their captains prize winners than they are about who wins the KGU Goty event? And you can ask the same of the Muthaiga Open, the Windsor Classic, Nyali Open and so on.

Have golf clubs essentially, for all intents and purposes abandoned the KGU Goty events? Are we perhaps heading to a time when clubs may start questioning the very place of these events on their already crowded calendars?

I stand to be corrected, but apart form the Coast Open, aka Barry Cup, held at the Mombasa Sports Club, which always seems to elicit some excitement among the Coast golfers driven by their rivalry with the visitors from ‘up-country’ which other KGU Goty event gets the golfing community talking?

And if we in the golfing community are not excited, how can we expect those outside golf to desire to join us?

Amateurs, in any sport, are inspired by the stars; our kids want to play great football in England driven by the EPL, our swimmers are inspired locally by the Dunfords and internationally by the Michael Phelps of this world.

My thinking is the KGU GOty series needs an urgent revamp. Sponsors have all but disappeared, the club members give these formerly prestigious events a wide berth, the media is not excited.

The only role the KGU Goty series continues to play is for the selection of the national team— although this too has been questioned repeatedly.

In 2010 Patrick Musimba and Davies Njoka introduced ‘trials’ to choose the team to the World Amateur Team Golf Championship (Eisenhower Trophy) in Argentina and not without controversy.