The 10-hole Gaekwad Baroda Golf Club (GBGC), for example, has identified junior golf as a focus area as it offers great potential for future business. Investor Babul Desai has opted to set up his world class 9 Hole Par 36 Golf Course on his 100-acre slice of real estate of residential plots, coming up on the outskirts of Vadodara in close proximity to one of the best industrial belts in Gujarat. According to Desai, there’s no other city apart from Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar that offers such good business potential in this emerging field in the state right now. Home already to the superb GBGC, dating back to the 1930s, Gujarat has recently seen several courses coming up around Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and Vadodara.
Gujarat now has its own golf association tasked to manage and represent the sport, for which it’s already been given the green signal by the Indian Golf Union (IGU), the apex body of golf in India. This step will be a huge boost for accruing funds for promoting the sport. According to Samarjitsinh Gaekwad, ex-IGU council member and president of Gaekwad Baroda Golf Club (GBGC), with this accreditation, ‘Every golf club in the state will be treated like a district. The Gujarat golf association will come under IGU’s west zone that comprises Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Goa. We will start getting funds and several golf tournaments and programmes will be held in the state through this association.’
KENSVILLE COUNTRY CLUB – The 18-hole Jeev Milkha Singh signature golf course at Kensville Country Club (an hour’s drive from Ahmedabad) is seeing an increasing number of golfers, as the promotion of the sport goes into top gear, pushed as it is being by no less a man than Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in his home state. During the third edition of the Gujarat Kensville Challenge Golf, golfing aficionados were treated to the strongest ever field as both the Indian Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI) and European Challenge season for 2013 season teed off here. The Kensville Challenge has now become the regular season-opener for both the Tours.
