The Asian Development Tour comes to Bangladesh for the first time with the tee off od the Grameenphone Bangladesh Masters 2011 at the Kurmitola Golf Club tomorrow.
Bangladesh’s golfing sensation Siddikur Rahman is the favourite for the event where some 94 golfers including 42 from Bangladesh and the rest from 15 other nations namely — Japan, Malaysia, England, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Canada, USA, Ireland, Belgium, Australia, Thailand, Pakistan, Phili-ppines, India, Korea — are taking part.
“It is a tremendous effort that Bangladesh is hosting its first Development Tour event. We are confident that more events will be added throughout the course of the season to the five tournaments which we have already announced,” said Htwe Hla Han, senior director of Tour Development, Asian Tour, at a press conference at the club house in Cantonment yesterday.
“There are many young and talented players who do not have direct entry to the Asian Tour which is very competitive. The Asian Development Tour was created with the aim of building a platform for the budding golfers across the region to sharpen their skills and through this tour we hope to unearth more champions who will excel on Asian Tour,” said Han adding that three top finishers of Grameen-phone Masters will have entries to the Asian Tour for the following season.
The Asian Development Tour was launched in 2010 with the aim of creating a career pathway for professional golfers in Asia and was hosted by Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia and Chinese Taipei. This season’s tour gets underway from Bangladesh.
Grameenphone, one of leading telecom operators in the country, are the title sponsors of the event as they came up with a sponsorship money worth US 75,000 dollars while the co-sponsors are Aamra Group, Eastern Bank Ltd, Farid Group, Meghna Group, Pink City and Hotel Radission Water Garden.
“Hosting the first-ever Asian Development Tour in country is something to be proud of and Grameen-phone are delighted to sponsor the event. We hope this tour will take many golfers to the top of glory like Siddikur Rahman,” said Tahmid Azizul Haq, deputy director, marketing communications of Grameenphone.
Secretary General of Bangladesh Golf Federation Brig General Mirza Baker Sarwar Ahmed believes the Grameenphone Masters would raise the profile of Bangladesh’s golf and inspire others to come into sport of golf as country’s potential golfers have been given chance to compete with the talents of Asian Development Tour.
Siddikur and English golfer Neil Reilly also spoke on the occasion.
