No fewer than 160 young golfers are participating in the ongoing 15th IBB Golf Junior Open Championship at the IBB International Golf & Country Club, Abuja.
The Lady Captain of the Club, Comfort Folashade Olateju, disclosed this while speaking at the official tee-off of the championship on Tuesday.
She said: “This year, we have 160 participants. We have from Otukpo Golf Club, we have from four golf clubs in Jos, from Bauchi, from Ikeja, from Ikoyi, from Delta, from Portharcourt. They are from over 20 clubs across the country.
“We are hoping they are our future golfers. As we are growing older, they are coming behind.
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“Our intention is to get the best for the year and we call the person the champion of the year. In the first instance, you can see them mixing together. They came from all over the country.
“Apart from picking the best from them, we want them to come and compete among themselves from different clubs and as they are competing, they make friends.”
She said the young golfers are within the seven and 18 years age bracket, adding that they are distributed into three categories.
“We have seven to 10, 11 to 14, and 15 to 18,” she said.
On his part, the President of Nigeria Golf Federation (NGF), Otunba Olusegun Runsewe, said the federation had been going to clubs to discover young talents, adding that: “We have brought up a lot of programmes to make sure that we contact the young ones early enough so that at the end of the day, we can have enough numbers.
“It is when we start early and have enough numbers that we can have in the nearest future, some of our youths in the circuit playing golf. We are happy that they (IBB Golf and Country Club) are getting this right and they are tapping into it.”
Also speaking, the Oba Olumobi of Imobi-Ijesa, HRH Dr Adetayo Haastrup, said though some still believe that golfing is for some special elites, it was obvious that the game is for all.
He said: “Now that we are having our younger children to come up, we are meeting up with international standards in the developed world. They catch them young and that is what we are doing at IBB Golf Club and we are happy that the Lady’s Gold section is doing the same. Soon, these younger ones you are seeing, we will definitely see Tiger Wood and others from them.”
The championship with take place from 15th to 19th August 2023.
