A glittering ceremony marks completion of tournament season at East Point Golf in Visakhapatnam
The Hindu
A glittering ceremony of Captain’s Night marks completion of tournament season at East Point Golf in Visakhapatnam
After a year packed with tournaments which drew golfers across the country, the East Point Golf Club (EPGC) celebrated the winners of the year’s tournaments with the Captain’s Night last weekend, marking the completion of the tournament season. Played over two days in March, the tournament winner was Commander R Jay Kumar. The chief guest for the event was Vice-Admiral Sanjay Vatsayan, Chief of Staff, Eastern Naval Command.
This year, about 10 major tournaments were conducted. The course that was redesigned into a category-A championship course has been buzzing with action. In the last tournament season, EPGC started the Vizag Golf League with eight teams of 12 players each and the tournament was conducted over a period of six to eight weeks. The league has now become an annual event of the club. A lush landscape of fairways and endless greens, the renovated EPGC is now well placed on the national golfing map.
“It is naturally beautiful course ensconced within hills. The upgradation of the course has given a big fillip to the golfing culture of Visakhapatnam. Starting from April, a series of tournaments are lined up. In May, two national-level tournaments by Indian Golf Union will be held,” says Seshagiri Mantri, member of entertainment committee of EPGC and adds: “The club also doubles as a social space wherein members enjoy an array of services apart from the camaraderie and bonhomie.”
EPGC is set to host the Circars Cup and ASD Cup to kickstart its new tournament season from April.
The club was started in 1884, primarily for the relaxation of the British. It moved to its present location at Mudasarlova in 1964 with the efforts of Raja PV Gajapathi Raju of Vizianagaram and other passionate golfers of the time. Today the club has about 2,000 members out of which 300 are active golfers.
He has worn India’s blues, albeit in an Under-19 World Cup, with K.L. Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Harshal Patel and Jaydev Unadkat as his teammates. He has proudly adorned the Lion’s Crest — the famed Mumbai cricket logo — in all three formats. He has played with Yuvraj Singh, against Virat Kohli and Rahul Dravid and has the likes of Rahul and Joe Root in his illustrious list of dismissals. He is also a software developer for an IT giant, based in California. Virtually every middle-class Indian over the last three decades at some stage dreams of being either a cricketer or an IT professional. Saurabh Netravalkar has been combining two dreams, even after relocating to USA to pursue academics at the prestigious Cornell University in 2015.