V Krishnaswamy: New stakes in the game

SIMPLY GOLF

After months of hectic parleying between all the concerned parties, the Professional Golf Association of India (PGAI) embarks on its new season.

While its previous sponsors "" Hero Honda "" pushed the game to a new level with considerable infusion of funds, its new patron, Sahara India Pariwar, has a direct stake in the game.

Picking up the sponsorship under the banner of Amby Valley Sahara Lake City, Sahara India wants to focus on the mega city project in Maharashtra as a premier golf destination in India. Spread over 10,000 acres of land, Amby Valley boasts of an international standard 18-hole, flood-lit championship golf course.

For this reason alone, the sponsors will have every reason to ensure the success of the Amby Valley PGAI Tour "" as it will be called ""as the players and the promoters.

Sahara India Pariwar, which has added golf to their impressive sports portfolio after cricket and hockey, has both the money and a strong presence in the electronic and print media to promote the game.

But the key to the Amby Valley PGAI Tour will be its ability to raise Rs 3.05 crore. Is the Indian Tour worth that much? The Tour managers are planning a minimum of 20 tournaments. And to get an aggregate of Rs 3.05 crore, they will need to organise five to six events of Rs 25 lakh and more as also 16 events of Rs 10 lakh each.

The buzz going around is that there is a possibility of a big money event to the tune of $ 200,000 (Rs 90 lakh), which would be joint-sanctioned by the Indian Tour and the Asian Tour. And the big ticket event could be backed by the Sahara Group to promote its Amby Valley Project.

The group stands to gain in two respects: For one, the Tour will get a big event "" with foreign participation "" and secondly, Amby Valley will get the mileage it is playing for.

Besides, the tag of Amby Valley as the umbrella sponsor of the PGAI Tour means that the brandname will travel to Nepal, the venue of the Gokarna Open Tournament, the Bangladesh Open as well as to Sri Lanka, which is almost certain to host an event this year.

The Amby Valley PGAI Tour kicked off with the Southern Swing and will have four events in the south.

On the face of it it might seem that only the PGAI and Tiger Sports Marketing (TSM) have a stake in it, but the Sahara Group has as much interest in the Tour.

Apart from the golf course, the Amby Valley Project will also house a golf academy and state-of-the-art teaching facilities like swing analysis, laser club fitting and bio-mechanics, among others.

The academy will be certified by the PGA of Great Britain and Ireland. So with that kind of investment having already been made, the Sahara Group has every reason to ensure the success of the Tour.

The PGAI has also awarded the rights to manage the Tour to Tiger Sports Marketing again. The new five-year contract however, did not come through easily with a section of the PGAI still unconvinced about Tiger Sports' ability to raise the promised figure of Rs 3.05 crore as prize money for the season.

During its previous tenure, Tiger Sports failed to match the target sum once . They fell way short of the promised Rs 2.5 crore, but then tried to cover ground by backing a PGAI-TSM Open, for which Tiger Sports chipped in prize money worth Rs 28 lakh, the biggest in the last season.