We must tap talent from universities to grow golf

Every year, and after either the Friday second round or the Saturday third round at the Farmers Insurance Open — a PGA Tour event — the University Day Challenge, a fun competition that encourages PGA Tour players to wear their university colours, is staged.

The Tour players are joined, in the fun competition, by university mascots and fans are also encouraged to wear university colours.

The Tour players engage in the fun competition to raise money for their respective universities and the sponsors, Farmers Insurance, donate about Sh1 million to charity in the names of the PGA Tour players.

This train of thought was triggered by an event in Kenya organised by the Golf Talent Foundation (GTF), the Pamoja Inter-University Golf Tournament to be held today at the Vet Lab Sports Club.

According to GTF chairman Njani Nderitu, this is the first time an event of this nature is being held in Kenya.

“At the Golf Talent Foundation, we believe that to develop the game we have no choice but to tap talent from the universities to begin with and move to secondary and primary schools in the future,” he said.

“Golf in Kenya needs a place from which to tap talent and I believe that the universities and other tertiary institutions of learning are a low hanging fruit.”

To test the theory of GTF and chairman Njani, I looked at the background of some of the top golfers in the world starting with world number one Dustin Johnson. He is a graduate of Coastal Carolina University while Jordan Spieth is a graduate of the University of Texas.

Hideki Matsuyama is third on the Official World Golf Ranking list and is a graduate of Tohoku Fukushi University, Justin Thomas went to the University of Alabama and Joh Rahm is a graduate of the Arizona State University. Phil Michelson, Jim Furyk and Rory Sabbatini also attended Arizona State.

Henrik Stenson, ranked 9th on the OWGR, attended the University of South Carolina. Adam Scott, Chad Campbell and Ryan More attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The great Tiger Woods attended Stanford University and he often wears their colours in public appearances.

The world’s top lady golfer is South Korean So Yeon Ryu and she attended the Yonsei University. Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist is ranked fourth and is a graduate of Arizona State University.

New Zealand’s Lydia Ko, who lit up the LPGA a few years ago, becoming one of the youngest winners on the Tour ever, is a graduate of the Korea University.

So what is the moral of the story? My pedestrian dip stick research tells me that a good majority of top golfers in the world, both men and women, are university graduates.

It therefore follows, and this is the theory of GTF chairman Nderitu, that to grow the game we must tap talent from the colleges and universities and not the caddy ranks. Simple really.

The inter-university tournament today at Vet Lab should be the first of many and Nderitu and his colleagues at GTF should be supported by all and sundry.

“This event is in line with the GTF strategic plan 2016-2019 and we aim to identify and develop golf talent from among these university students. We are in discussions with organisers of the Inter-university games with a view of including golf as part and parcel of those games,” he added.

“This inaugural event has attracted over 70 students from Nazarene University, Strathmore University, University of Nairobi, JKUAT, KCA University, and Daystar University among others.”

Who knows, perhaps in future Kenya Open Golf Champions we will see our own version of the University Day Challenge.