Groundworkers drive a cart during a practice round ahead of the Mexico Open golf tournament in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024
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Fernando Llano/Copyright 2024 The AP. All rights reserved.
By Agencies
In a global sporting landscape were Golf struggles to compete, Kenya is bucking the trend.
The growth spurt started three years ago when this week’s Magical Kenya Open joined the DP World Tour.
Title sponsor DP World have played a major role, and this year they have donated the ‘DP World Container 3.0’ to Kenya’s Junior Golf Federation (JGF).
“The last two years we’ve doubled the number of kids who play golf thanks to the initiatives that DP world has done for us” said JGF president Regina Gachora.
“We as the Junior Golf Foundation have gone from zero coaches to 100 coaches from around the country. We’ve also distributed about 200 golf sets. And then another 15 have just come from DP world.”
The “DP World Container 3.0′ is the successor to the ‘DP World second-life container” which travelled with the Tour and collected over 280,000 balls for grass roots golf around the world.
“The 24,000 balls we received have gone to 30 golf clubs around the country” confirmed Gachora.
Some of the Federation’s early graduates are starting to make an impact. 23yr-old twins Mutahi and Njoroge Kibugu are big hitters, and Mutahi famously made the cut at last year’s Kenya Open
“Junior golf has always been a big thing in Kenya” said Mutahi. “On the continent (Africa), I would say we’ve been top five, but, we’ve never really broken the threshold because of facilities”
“Kids are seeing that golf is a game they can play like any other sport, football or athletics, which are big in this country. Let golf be one of those sports that they think of as their top five games to play.” said Gachora.
The ‘DP World Container 3.0″ houses golf equipment; including balls, clubs, clothing and swing nets, and will be donated to other growing golf centres around the world.
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