The Golf Industry Association (GIA), India’s premier body representing golf infrastructure providers, equipment manufacturers and apparel brands, announced a path-breaking initiative termed ‘India Learn Golf Week’ (ILGW) with the support and endorsement of the Professional Golf Association (PGA) of America, the world's largest sports organization, comprised of approximately 30,000 men and women golf professionals who are the recognised experts in teaching and growing the game.
The ILGW will be conducted across golf clubs in the country between September 25-October 1, 2017 and will aim to initiate 28000 new golfers potentially to the game in its first year. The announcement came at the end of the second and concluding day of the India Golf Expo 2017, which concluded at Gurugram’s DLF Club 5.
Commenting on the announcement, Mr. Aakash Ohri, acting President and patron, GIA, said, “We believe this will be a path-breaking initiative in promoting the game in the country and we request all golf clubs and all stakeholders of Indian Golf to take the lead in the making ILGW successful.
"We aim to eventually target 100,000 new golfers through this initiative. We already have commitments from many major golf clubs of the country, however, our aim is to conduct it simultaneously in all the 170 odd private clubs across the country.”
Also sharing her thoughts was Ms. Champika Sayal, Secretary General, Women’s Golf Association of India (WGAI) saying, “This is a brilliant initiative and is sure to grow the game exponentially in the country. I have not seen anything like this in my last 45 years of playing the game.”
Mike Round, Director-development, Ladies European Tour (LET) said, “ILGW is a very good initiative. In the United Kingdom, this kind of focus spread over a week has always added value and along with proper promotion and publicity this can work wonders for the growth of the Golf in India.”
Professional coaches will conduct the ILGW and the curriculum will be designed on the PGA of America’s popular five class “Get Golf Ready” curriculum. The concluding day of the Expo also saw the release of a first of its kind research report on India’s Golf economy titled ‘A comprehensive outlook on the Indian Golf industry’, which was commissioned by GIA and published by Ken Research.
Irrigation Products International (IPI) and Jacobsen were also Platinum and Silver sponsors of the report. Among the key findings of the report were that the total value contributed by the Indian Golf economy till 2015 stood at INR 2202.5 crores and 12989 jobs were generated in the same period.
