Ten teams confirm for the inaugural Louis Philippe Cup

The unique league that will see city based teams gunning for the biggest prize money in domestic golf has got players and fans excited

New Delhi: Inspired by the success of league based tournaments featuring city-centric teams in other sports like cricket, hockey and boxing, the Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI), Louis Philippe and RNGM have come together to conceive the Louis Philippe Cup. The revolutionary concept features 10 city based that will fight for the total prize fund of Rs. 1.24 crore — the biggest purse on the Indian tour at the Karnataka Golf Association from March 5-10 2012.The unique format of the tournament will see 30 top professionals representing the 10 teams, besides an equal number of amateurs, who will play in the pro-am category for the first two days of the tournament for the Inter-City Pro-Am Cup.  The aim of the Louis Philippe Cup is to create a city based fan following and encourage more people to play the game.

Star Indian players who will be seen in action include Puravankara  Bangalore's Asian Tour winner Anirban Lahiri, DLF Gurgaon's three time Indian Open champion and former Asian Tour No. 1 Jyoti Randhawa and winner of Singapore Classic Himmat Rai, two-time European Tour winner SSP Chowrasia representing Take Chennai, the 2002 Busan Asian Games individual gold medallist and Asian Tour Newcomer of the Year, Shiv Kapur, turning out for 3C Delhi and  two time Asian Tour winner Gaganjeet Bhullar representing Dev-Ellora Chandigarh. Apart from these marquee players, other seasoned campaigners of PGTI will take their best shot at glory.  

Each city team will consist of three players. Two of whom have been selected on the basis of their 2011 Rolex Rankings as of December and the third player was chosen by the sponsor. This was done in order to give the team sponsors a chance to pick players who primarily play on international tours and are unable to maintain their domestic rankings like Kapur, Randhawa and Chowrasia.The cities selected to field teams are Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkota, Lucknow, Delhi, Gurgaon, Chandigarh and Noida.  

Commenting on the exciting development in Indian golf, Padamjit Sandhu, Director, PGTI said: “This is an important new innovation in format in professional golf and could potentially be a game changer in the way fans relate to India's top golf stars. We would like to thank Louis Philippe and Rishi Narain Golf Management for creating this new event on the PGTI Tour and we know that India's top players and members of the PGTI are excited to participate in the tournament, rooting for their team to finish at the top.”

Speaking about their association with golf, Jacob John, Brand Head, Louis Philippe, commented: “Pioneering an innovative format in professional golf, we plan to position Louis Philippe Cup as the No. 1 Golf tournament in the country. It is our endeavour to bring together golf enthusiasts at a single platform and create a base for established players as well as upcoming talent in the country.”

The sponsors of the ten teams expressed their solidarity and excitement of wanting to win the Trophy. They included Devang Shah of Navratna Developers (Ahmedabad), Jack Bastian Nazareth of Puravankara Projects(Bangalore), H. R. Srinivasan of TAKE Solutions(Chennai), Vidur Bharadwaj of The 3C Company (Delhi), Aakash Ohri of DLF Ltd (Gurgaon), Sushil Ansal of Ansal API (Lucknow), Rohan Seolekar of Oxford Group (Mumbai & Pune), Piyush Tiwari of Shubhkamna-Advert (Noida) . Kapil Dev mentioned that he felt this would help put the Indian pro golfers on an unprecedented pedestal and Dilip Thomas said for him this event created a national media platform which was part of a larger brand building strategy for AVT Group.

This latest innovation in Indian golf has got the golfing community and professional players excited.  Gaurav Ghei, a veteran of 20 years on the Indian and other international tours said: “As professional tour players we don’t get many opportunities to play team formats and it does add an entirely new exciting dimension to the game. On the global golf platform, the most appealing events for fans and players alike are team events like the Ryder Cup (USA v Europe); the President's Cup (USA v Rest of World outside Europe), Royal Trophy (Asia v Europe) and Dynasty Cup (Asia v Japan). We enjoying playing in team events and fans are extremely excited to watch and cheer for their teams.”

Rishi Narain, the 1982 Delhi Asian Games team gold medallist and founder of Rishi Narain Golf Management, who has been the moving force for developing the concept from the drawing board stage to the implementation of the event, said: “We would like to thank the team of Louis Philippe for embracing the Pro Team Golf concept and are looking forward to producing an event with unparalleled fan appeal on the domestic golf scene. Our aim is to establish India’s immensely talented golf pros as genuine superstars in the eyes of sports fans across India. They deserve the recognition and fan following considering their consistent international victories over the past fifteen years. Among Indian sportsmen, golfers outperform almost every other Indian sportsman consistently. Indian pro golfers face intense competition against players from over 100 countries every time they compete overseas and with winner’s prizes regularly crossing Rs. 1 crore on the international circuit, the quality of players and intensity of competition our golfers face every week

is far greater than in most other sports. We hope the Louis Philippe Cup will create true superstars out of our pro golfers and connect fans like never before.”

The unique format of the five day event features one day of pro-am followed by two days (36 holes) strokeplay in which all 10 teams will compete. The four teams with the best total team scores over 36 holes will advance to the semi-finals. From the semi-finals onwards the top four teams will play in Matchplay format. One-on-one matches between the three players of each team will earn each team one point for a win and zero for a loss. No match will be halved and tied matches after 18 holes will be decided on the basis of sudden-death playoff. The two winning semi-finalists will go head-to-head in the finals on March 10.

As India’s richest golf tournament, the winning team stands to win Rs.36 lacs, while runners-up will earn Rs. 24 lacs, team finishing in third place will earn a purse of Rs.18 lacs and the team placed fourth will receive Rs. 12 lacs. 5th – 10th place team earn Rs.9.5lacs, Rs.7.00 lacs, Rs.5.5 lacs, Rs.4.5 lacs, Rs.3.5 lacs and Rs.3 lacs respectively in order of their final standings.To encourage the involvement of fans directly with the teams, each of the 10 teams will also field a team of three amateur club golfers who have been selected by local clubs on the basis of club qualifying tournaments. The three club amateurs will play alongside the professionals during the first two official rounds of strokeplay in the Louis Philippe Cup. The three amateur scores will be added to the pros scores to determine the Inter-City Pro-Am Cup, which will be presented after the first 36 holes of the tournament. However, the amateur scores will not be counted in determining the four top teams advancing to the semi-finals for the Louis Philippe Cup.