Great weather for first golf practice

Scarborough: The first day of practice yesterday for the Caribbean Amateur Golf Championships was blessed with great weather at the Tobago Plantations Golf and Beach Resort.

The tournament, organised by the Caribbean Golf Association, gets underway in earnest tomorrow. The top amateur players representing the ten participating countries were able to test their golf skills yesterday while enjoying the ambience of the host site. The member organisations of the CGA are Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, OECS, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos and US Virgin  Islands. An early tee time for the defending champions Puerto Rico, helped them to get a feeling of the Bob Hunt designed par 72 golf course featuring approx 6,700 yards of excellent fairways and greens. Weather conditions did allow for practice yesterday and the Puerto Ricans managed to get some good scores as a preview to what could happen during competition.

Last year the team set a record by winning all five trophies as they hosted at their home course at the Westin Rio Mar Beach Resort and Golf Club. Trinidad and Tobago, second place last year; and Barbados found the course in great shape and look forward to an excellent competition among other Caribbean nations. This year the championship features a new division for the mid-amateurs, the “Ramon Baez Trophy” donated by the Dominican Republic Golf Federation. This competition will give the  age group 35-50 yrs a chance to compete and will also level the Hoerman Cup Trophy teams. The flag raising and opening ceremony is carded today .

The major sponsors are Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs; Ministry of Culture and Tourism; Tobago House of Assembly; . Angostura/ Dewar’s; Carlsberg;  HCL Group of Companies; National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Ltd;  Neal and Massy Holdings;  Neal and Massy Motors; Rahamut/Texaco;  Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrew’s; Scotiabank ; TIDCO Tourism and Industrial Development Company of T and T Ltd.; and  Tracmac.