12 events at IGU Eastern India Amateur Feeder Tour

KOLKATA: The second edition of the

IGU Eastern India Amateur Feeder Tour

will start on Thursday with the

Tolly Amateur Open

at the Tollygunge Club. There will be a total of 12 tournaments played in Kolkata, Assam (Kaziranga), Patna, Jamshedpur and Shillong. The organizers are also trying to incorporate another event in Bhubaneswar.


Five events will be held in Kolkata, including the

West Bengal State Championship

.

There are five categories in the tournaments: amateur, mid-amateur, senior, super seniors and ladies. The top-six amateur players will qualify for the IGU Main Tour while other players will be officially ranked in their age categories in Eastern India and will be eligible to be considered for the national teams. The mid-amateur section is contested by golfers in the age category of 35 to 50 years, seniors in the age bracket of 50 to 60 years and super seniors will 60 years and above.

"The first edition went well. It was charted territory for us but we managed to pull it off. We had an average of 70 players per tournament. I expect that to get to 100 this time round," said Indrajit Bhalotia, who is part of the organizing team.

Last year, half a point separated the Order of Merit winner,

Armaan Parikh

of Jamshedpur, with Kolkata's Karan Verma, who was runner-up. Patna's Vijay Kumar had triumphed in the mid-amateur section while the senior and super senior categories were won by Kolkata's Sanjay Sanwal.

Geetika Ahuja, who has also been playing on the IGU Amateur Tour Ladies section for the last one year, was the winner of the ladies category last year. "This is a very important Tour which helps me prepare well," said Ahuja.