By OUR CORRESPONDENT
The Junior Golf Foundation tournaments are now averaging 140 players per tournament played across the country in a new spike of junior golfers embracing the sport.
JGF president Vincent Mukiri says they now have a dedicated pipeline that ensures the numbers are constant in all the tournaments. This is despite the national junior golf team being in camp all year round and missing some of the events.
Mukiri says the game plan from 2025 has changed and they are looking at a wide base of players away from the national team.
Junior golf foundation will now introduce regional golf schools. The schools in all the six JGF regions across the country, will have their best players being trained to feed the national team with players.
“What we will then see in another one or two years is a national team made up of members from across the regions and not just Nairobi as is the case right now,” explained Mukiri.
“We are then seeing our national team members starting to go out there to colleges and follow up collegiate golf”, he added.
Mukiri observed that the international market is starting to look into Kenya and the juniors are getting the opportunities.
The plan is to have a clear pathway in respect to when the junior players get to 18 and 21: where do they go to college for their golf, do they become pro golfers, or do they take up a career they love. The pathway is being refined continuously to ensure that no junior golfer “gets lost” and they are being channelled to colleges, universities, professional golf level and career golf level.
JGF is also strengthening the grassroot training at the regions. It involves coaches and teachers in all the regions, and the progress is now being measured objectively.
“We are looking at what has been done in training in two ways; first, we are requiring the coaches to start giving us objective reports that include the people they are coaching, the skill level they are at, and what the coaches think in terms of their development”, expounded Mukiri. “Secondly, we are developing a way of measuring the progress of our juniors; do we know which junior is in grade one in terms of skills, and we are coming up with a way of having every junior in our country knowing that this is the level that I am at.”
In the last tournament played at the Thika Sports Club, Peter Gathogo remained the man to beat in the boys 13-14 years category with a score of 77. Amar Shah finished second with a score of 78 while Kagame Handa and Tsorav Soni tied in third position with a score of 83.
In the Girls 11-12 years old category, Aria Dodhia played level par 72 to emerge the winner. Ashley Muyela was one shot behind with a score of 73 with Chloe Chiuri finishing third with a score of 81.
Randy Turi won the Girls 13-14 years category with a score of 81.
