The fourth leg of the Junior Golf Foundation US Kids tournament was cancelled over the weekend due to the heavy rains that pounded Nairobi since Friday.
A total of 149 junior players were in the draw for the tournament at the Karen country club, but the overnight rains did not allow any play to tee off.
“The greens are waterlogged so it won’t be fair to have our juniors going out on a course like this. We are in talks with our captain and the Junior golf Foundation to see if we can come up with an alternative date. We will go through our golf calendar to see if we can find a suitable date to host them back here again,” said Eric Barry, the tournament convenor at the Karen Country Club. The Junior Golf Foundation president Regina Gachora confirmed talks are underway to find a new date, possibly a Saturday or a Sunday or any other day during the school holidays.
“A lot of areas at Karen are flooded which is not a good environment for the juniors. Tee off was 7:00am, but nobody had teed off at 8:30am when we cancelled the tournament because it was still raining heavily,” she added.
“The grounds team walked through the course when it looked like the rains would subside, but the water was too much in many areas.
We cancelled for the best interest of the juniors, and we will find a better day for them,” she concluded.
The JGF US Kids tournaments have grown with more junior golfers coming out to play some good golf. The three tournaments of 2023 have witnessed different winners in the different categories, a clear indicator of growth in the competition.
“Juniors who started with us in the Spring season of 2022 (February), between then an now, a period of one year, they have grown their game and are much better players. They are more comfortable on the course and that’s why we are having different winners in every other tournament,” observed the president.
As a result, JGF actually had an elite squad that was allowed to play at the Magical Kenya Open earlier in March.
“A lot of those juniors play US Kids tournaments and we have looked at their handicaps and they have dropped (improved) by 5-10 points ever since they started playing the US Kids tournaments. We have new talents coming through and we are very excited about it,” observed Gachora.
It is a busy calendar for Junior golf Foundation with the first of three inter schools’ championships at the end of March before the next two rounds of the Spring tournaments in April, and then the junior open tournaments at Vetlab in Kabete and at the Coast at the Vipingo Ridge.
