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| Sunday, 5 June 2005 |
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Six Lankans eye Mercedes Benz golf in Queensland by Lal Gunasekera Six golfers from Sri Lanka will qualify for the Asian Finals of the Mercedes-Benz Trophy Golf Championship to be staged in Queensland, Australia from August 3 to 5. They will be the winners and runners-up of the three groups at the Country Finals to be worked off at the Royal Colombo Golf Club (RCGC) on Saturday (June 11). This is the 14th consecutive year that this event is staged in Sri Lanka sponsored by automobile giant, DIMO. It's Stableford tournament to be in three groups - Group 'A' (Handicap 0 to 12), Group 'B' (Handicap 13 to 20) and Group 'C' (Handicap 21 to 24) with the winners and runners-up qualifying to play in Australia in August. Captain of the RCGC, Elmo de Silva, speaking at a media briefing last Tuesday at the RCGC, said that the RCGC considers this tournament sponsored by DIMO as its flagship tournament as there are no other competition with so many "goodies" on offer. Only 220 players could compete and is not been restricted to the members of only the RCGC, but also those from Nuwara-Eliya Golf Club (NEGC) and Victoria Golf Club (VGC) too could participate. De Silva further said that DIMO's are very generous sponsors throwing in a lot of trophies, giveaways etc and are grateful for DIMO and its Chairman-CEO, Ranjith Pandithage, in coming forward to conduct this event at the RCGC for the 14th consecutive year. Chairman-CEO of DIMO, Ranjith Pandithage, said that they are very happy to stage this event at the RCGC with previous Captains and staff giving them all co-operation. He said that DIMO were comfortable with the RCGC than other clubs and hoped that this year too it will be a successful tournament. DIMO's have sent over 90 golfers from Sri Lanka overseas since the inception of this event, and this year alone, over 56,000 players will compete for honours including India, who are having a tournament for the first time. Ten countries from Asia will be represented in Australia in August. They are - Sri Lanka, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Chinese Taipei, Brunei, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia. Forty two countries will be represented at the World Finals in Stuttgart, Germany from September 22 to 27 and nine Sri Lankans have qualified for this event previously, including Lalin Samarawickreme, Lalith Ramanayake and Navin de Silva, who finished second in his group a few years back. A former President of RCGC, Lalin Samarawickreme, too spoke about his experiences and recalled the inaugural event he won and then his participation at the Asian Finals in Malaysia and Thailand as well as DIMO's hospitality. Among the others who were present were Hiranjan Welagedera (General Manager of DIMO), Ananda Jayasekera (Tournament Co-ordinator) and Chula de Silva (General Manager of RCGC). |
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