Vet Lab Sports Club Robinson Owiti follows his shot from 18th hole fairway during the fourth day of first leg of Safari Tour golf series, at Limuru Country Club on October 7, 2020.
Professional Golfers of Kenya (PGK) have written to Magical Kenya Open (MKO) Local Organising Committee (LOC) demanding five additional slots or they take legal action.
PGK secretary general Robinson Owiti said that they have given the LOC a 24-hour ultimatum to make the amendments based on their agreement with the European Tour that is also known as the DP World Tour.
Local professionals were given eight slots for this year’s Tour leading to PGK protesting the allocations as they demanded for more spots.
Owiti refused to accept the two additional slots for the professionals that LOC has given. The PGK secretary challenged the LOC to make the agreement it had with DP Tour public.
Owiti said the agreement that they are in possession of should be implemented to the fullest with a total 22 local golfers participating -- 16 professional and six amateurs.
“Someone can’t claim that the agreement with DP Tour is not a public document when MKO is a national event and local professionals are the main stakeholders,” said Owiti. He said that they will decide on how they will approach the legal action if LOC doesn’t yield to their demands.
LOC chairman Patrick Obath disclosed yesterday that they had given PGK two more slots after the local professionals had demanded for more places on Monday.
“We have taken away two slots from the foreign entries to give it to them. I am not in a position to give them more slots since I will be going against our agreement with DP World Tour,” said Obath.
He declined to divulge the contents of the agreement saying he needed authority from DP World Tour to do so.
Obath said DP World had initially allocated the local professionals six slots but added two more following a request from MKO LOC.
“If they can add two more for a total of 10 professionals then it’s possible to give us five more with ease as per the agreement. We are not asking for more than that,” said Owiti.
A field of 146 players are scheduled to compete in the Kenya Open from February 20 to 23 at the Muthaiga Golf Club. History seems to be repeating itself three decades later.
In 1992, the government intervened to avert in the Kenya Open Golf Championships after local professionals threatened to boycott.
The organisers of the Open introduced a qualifying tournament where top three finishers would play at the 1991 Standard Chartered Kenya Open.
Any professional who didn’t score 300 gross and under at the local pre-qualifying tournament would be locked out of the European Challenge Tour.
That requirement saw only three local professionals making the cut in the pre-qualifier -- John Njunge (292), John Ngugi (299) and legendary Olympian race walker-turned golfer Elisha Kasuku (300).
They were joined by three other golfers, John Ngigi, the late Charles Farrar and the late Peter Njiru, who qualified by virtue of having made the cut during the 1990 555 Kenya Open. Ngigi and Ngugi made the cut to finish in T 36th and T52nd respectively.
That requirement didn’t augur well with the professionals, who threatened to boycott the 1992 event if the organisers didn’t rescind the decision to hold a pre-qualifying tournament for local professionals.
The professionals lived up to their threats to boycott the pre-qualifying tournament, opting to go on tour of the Zimbabwe Open, Zambia Open, Nigeria Open and Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) Open.
Responsding to the professionals' plea for help, Permanent Secretary in the Office of President, Francis Boit, directed the organisers to either include all the local professionals in the event or have all the participating golfers from Europe to also go through the qualifier and score 300 gross.
Boit was categorical that if that didn’t happen then the event would be cancelled altogether. Organisers were forced to allowed all Kenyan professionals to compete in the Open.
“We wanted to send a message to the organisers that this was our event and not entirely for foreign players,” said Kasuku yesterday, adding that it’s sad that the same issues that cropped up three decades ago had returned.
"This is a free country and our professionals must be given enough slots,” said Kasuku.
He encouraged the Professional Golfers of Kenya (PGK) to demand for the contract signed between European Tour and Kenya Open Golf Limited to be made public since it’s a public event that is sponsored by the government.
