India’s longest running Corporate Golf Tournament kicked off its 19th edition at the ITC Classic on the 20th of January.
The World Corporate Golf Challenge is India’s most prestigious corporate golf tournament with India’s leading corporates all vying for a chance to make it to the world final in Portugal. WCGC is also the one of the few golf corporate golf tournaments in the country where the golfers play off the Championship Tees.
This year, the 4 cities hosting the event are: New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai & Bengaluru where also the National Final will take place. Winners & Runner Ups in two handicap categories from each of the legs qualify for a place at the National Final. Winners from the National Final will travel to Portugal to compete against the best corporate golfers from across 40 countries.
The Delhi leg, category A was won by Samarjeet Raikhy & the runner up who lost was Rishi Wadhera. Category B winner was Mukesh Sharma & runner up was Sunny Iqbal. Both categories were keenly contested with the best 2 golfers tied on nett points. The ties were broken on the golfer with the lower handicap.
Next up was the Kolkata leg. The World Corporate Golf Challenge went back to the City of Joy after a brief sabbatical. Despite the long Republic Day weekend, the top corporates in the city turned up in great numbers. In a city where golf is taken seriously, golfers shot low scores and was neck and neck in both handicap categories. Winner in Category A was Jaideep Chitlangia & Runner Up being Mayukh Ray who also shot the lowest score on the day. Category B winner was Vivek Dalmia & Kamlesh Agarwal.
The Mumbai leg was held the following week at the Bombay Presidency Golf Club. Besides the white collared golfing afficiandos, celebrities like former world finalist Ajit Agarkar & music sensation Raghav Sachar teed off for a chance to play the National Finals. The four qualifiers from Mumbai were Rahul Divan, Gautam Balakrishnan, R. Ramamurthy & Milind Patel.
WCGC is the largest internationally run corporate golf event and involves more than 7500 corporate participants from 40 countries. Making its debut in India in 1999, the Indian contingent has won the World Final in 2015 represented by Sonam Chugh & Sashidhar Reddy (both from Hyderabad).
