Jamshedpur, Dec. 15: For the first time the Tata Open Golf will be played at a single course, the 18-hole Golmuri Golf Club where top Indian professionals will be seen vying for top honour at the Rs 75 lakh prize money. The tournament was held at both the Beldih and Golmuri golf courses till last year.
The 14th Tata Open will be held in the steel city from 17th to 20th December while the Pro-Am event will be played on 16th December.
�Golf in Jamshedpur has evolved a bit and Tata Open being one of the country�s prime professional tournaments has attracted top golfing talents from across geographies to play in the scenic golf courses of the steel city�, said Kulvin Suri, Chief, Corporate Affairs and Communications, Tata Steel.
�Our idea was to build an 18-hole course in the Eastern part of the country only after the Royal Calcutta Golf Club and host the event in a single course�, said Mr. Suri adding, �Tata Steel has invested money at the re-modeled 18-hole Golmuri Course which is in a good condition and would be fascinating and exigent for the top professionals specially when the layout is challenging.
The next four days would be fascinating for Jamshedpur, he added.
Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, Uttam Singh Mundy, director, Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI), said, �120 golfers including 115 professionals, 5 amateurs along with players from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Australia and Korea would be part of the 14th Tata Open. An exciting contest lies in prospect as the leading professionals of the South Asian region compete for the lucrative prize purse and top position in the Rolex Ranking.
The Golmuri Golf course is in fantastic shape and players have been practicing at the lush greens of the course�, he added.
Mr Mundy further informed that the tournament will feature some of the top golfers such as Mukesh Kumar, Shamim Khan, defending champion Om Prakash Chouhan, M Dharma, Shankar Das, Shubhankar Sharma, Ashok Kumar, Udayan Mane, Khalin H Joshi and Abhinav Lohan while the top foreign players in the field are Anura Rohana, K Prabagaran and N Thangaraja of Sri Lanka, Kunal Bhasin of Australia and Nepal’s Shivaram Shrestha.
The local challenge will be led by Jamshedpur�s Karan Taunk, who won the PGTI Emerging Player of the Year title in 2014. Taunk was the runner-up at the 12th TATA Open in 2013.
Abhijit Singh Chadha with total prize money of over Rs 24 lakh lies second in PGTI�s 2015 Ranking, said, �The Golmuri course looks easy and the green is rolling and it would be my true test and perfect time to take a lead as the top ranked Chikkarangappa S will be out of action from Tata Open�, said the Chandigarh based golfer.
Also present at the press meet was veteran golfer Alan Singh.