Kolkata: Royal Calcutta Golf Club will play the perfect host to the season opening leg of the Hero Women’s Professional Golf tour 2013. The club that boasts of a rich history will host the Rs. 4,00,000 Hero RCGC Women’s Pro Golf Championship 2013 from the 29th to the 31st of January 2013.
The HeroWomen’s Professional Golf Tour 2013 will spread amongst 12 legs with a total of INR 60,00,000 as prize money.
This tournament will also see the revival of the stiff competition between Veteran golfer and 2012 OOM leader Smriti Mehra (Rs. 8,62,750) and the young and dynamic golfer Vani Kapoor (Rs. 8, 13, 500) who impressed the whole country by her fiery performance as a professional in her rookie season last year. Golf lovers from the City of Joy will be rooting for local girl Neha Tripathi who finished fourth in the 2012 Hero OOM with a total earning of Rs. 4,79,000.
Bangalore Golfer Sharmila Nicollet who retained her LET card for the 2013 season after a superb performance at Morocco in the LET Q School last year, will miss the first leg of the Hero RCGC Women’s Pro Golf Championship 2013 as she withdrew due to injury yesterday.
Ranked third in the 2012 Hero OOM, Delhi golfer Nalini Singh Siwach bid farewell to professional golf due to personal reasons and will not been see on the circuit this year onwards, while the tour has a new addition from Kenya, Bhavi Shah who will be the Rookie Player on the Hero Women’s Professional Golf Tour 2013.
“We had a very successful season last year, where both experienced hands like Smriti and young blood Vani and Nalini put up a great show making it a very exciting season. However we are really disappointed with Nalini Singh Siwach's retirement news from Women's professional golf. This is a real set back to the tour where we miss out on an extremely talented golfer right at the beginning of the 2013 season. Nalini was an extremely hardworking player whose potential had not yet been realized. However we are happy to have Bhavi Shah from Kenya as our rookie player this season and we hope the trend of high level competitive golf continues this year as well and we see more youngsters coming into fray. Women’s golf has seen considerable growth over past few years and we at WGAI are confident to keep the upward momentum going”, said Champika Sayal, Secretary General, WGAI.
Along with Smriti Mehra, Vani Kapoor and Neha Tripathi other golfers who would be seen on field today onwards are Ankita Tiwana, Pallavi Jain, Priya Puri, Rani Sonti, Vandana Agarwal and Bhavi Shah.