Mumbai: Former cricketer Ajit Agarkar with an individual score of 34, finished runner-up on Day 1 of the Mumbai leg of BMR World Corporate Golf Challenge held on April 22–23 at at the Bombay Presidency Golf Course, Mumbai. WCGC is the biggest international corporate golf team event worldwide involving more than 7500 corporate executives in 40 countries. The two-day qualifying leg in Mumbai witnessed close to 200 amateur golfers showcasing their golfing prowess. The India leg will witness the participation of around 600 corporate executives, paired as teams of two.
His teammate, Shabbir Rawjee of Trust Travel & Tours Pvt. Ltd. with an individual score of 35 also finished runner-up on Day 1.
The team of Akshay Puri of Akshay Puri Productions and Tarun Bali of Allegro Advisors was the winner on Day 1 of the Mumbai leg.
On Day 2, the team of Gautam Balakrishnan from TATA and Sachin Johri of IDFC won the Mumbai leg and the team of Chirag Doshi of Walchandnagar Industries Limited and Krishna Kilachand of Tyson consultants Pvt Ltd finished runner-up.
Four, 2-member teams from this Mumbai leg of the tournament, progress to the National finals to be played in Bangalore on 15th of May at the Prestige Golfshire. The Delhi – NCR leg’s four teams have already booked their berths for the national finals.
The winning teams from Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore legs will be vying for the national finals and represent corporate India at the prestigious 22nd Annual World Corporate Golf Challenge in Cascais, Portugal.
Amongst the participating teams were top corporate executives – David Hopcroft, General Manager – Le Meridian, Gurgaon; Vijay Chauhan, Chairman & MD, Parle Products; Ravikanth Konteti, Senior Managing Director, JP Morgan Chase Bank; Jayant Dua, CEO – Century Cement; S. Rengarajan, MD & CEO, IL&FS Securities and Services; Manish Motwani, MD – Kinetic Hyundai; Gautam Bhandari, MD, BNP Paribas; Raghav Rao, COO - Deutsche Bank; Leo Puri, MD – UTI Asset Management Company Ltd and Hemant Luthra, president Systech Sector – Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.
India made its competitive debut in WCGC in 1999 and 2016 marks the 17th year of its contention at world stage. India has had an illustrious history at the WCGC and is the defending champion courtesy the pair of Shashidhar Reddy and Sonam Chugh from Hyderabad who won the 2015 World Corporate Golf Challenge in Portugal.
The format of play was individual 18 hole modified Stableford for both players off 3/4th handicap.