Bangkok, Thailand
\n27 \u2013 31 October 2014<\/p>\n
The 5th<\/sup>\u00a0edition of the\u00a0Ballantine\u2019s Team- Am Golf Challenge\u00a0was in one of the most visited destination for Indians \u2013 Bangkok in Thailand. But it was for a reason, other than its popularity. The idea was to showcase the quality of golfing in and around Bangkok, which to say the least is highly underrated and often skips the radar, given other popular golfing destinations in Thailand such as Hua Hin and Phuket.<\/p>\n Given the size of the competing field \u2013\u00a0a whopping 186 golfers,\u00a0the entire lot was split into 3 groups playing 3 rounds of golf in all, each in rotation at one of the 3 top tracks in the Bangkok area \u2013 \u00a0Lotus Valley, Riverdale and the exclusive if not elusive Alpine Golf Club,\u00a0the venue of the 2000 and 2004 Johnnie Walker Classics won by Tiger Woods and Miguel Jimenez respectively. Weather was kind, despite the threatening forecasts and while one of the groups at Lotus Valley did encounter a disruption on the first day, all but 12 participants were able to complete their round.<\/p>\n The players were soon at their competitive best, sharpening their focus from the word go. The spectacular beauty and the intriguing challenge of the layouts served as the perfect backdrop to get their shots right. For the Team-event, two carefully selected Power Play holes with a relatively high degree of risk-reward, served as stimulants, enticing golfers to get the best points for their respective teams. There was no dearth of fine performances, as many overcame the challenges on the course and in their field, with the top spots for various leader boards fiercely competed for.<\/p>\n Maninder Pal Singh\u00a0of Mavericks from Chandigarh took the top spot for\u00a0Group A\u00a0in Net Individual Stableford Points, followed byKuntal Kar\u00a0of Birdie Machines from Mumbai.\u00a0Sanjay Kataria\u00a0of Fab Four from Delhi topped\u00a0Group B,\u00a0followed by\u00a0Ritu Lal Kumarof Telangana Tigers, Hyderabad. In\u00a0Group C,\u00a0it was\u00a0Aditya Deshmukh\u00a0of Pune Titans, Pune in the top place followed byRavikanth Konteti\u00a0of Ameya Charmers, Mumbai. In the best golf course wise performances \u2013\u00a0Sanjay Kataria\u00a0of Fab Four, Delhi was the\u00a0Best Individual Net Stableford Performer at Alpine,\u00a0followed by\u00a0Nagesh Vandakari\u00a0of Ameya Charmers, Mumbai; atLotus Valley,\u00a0Divesh Wadhawan\u00a0of Pune of the Ballantine\u2019s Team took the top spot, followed by\u00a0Gautam Gupta\u00a0of Hot Shots Delhi; at\u00a0Riverdale,\u00a0Anurag Chopra\u00a0of Chandigarh beat\u00a0Ritu Lal Kumar\u00a0of Hyderabad by just one point.<\/p>\n To top a field of 186 golfers and that too over 3 rounds, each played at a different golf course is no mean achievement \u2013 and therefore the top honours are reserved for such performances. The\u00a0Best Net Individual Stableford Winner\u00a0for the entire event was\u00a0Sidharth Chaudhary\u00a0of Swingers, Delhi with 113 Net Stableford Points, followed by\u00a0Aditya Deshmukh\u00a0of Pune Titans, Pune with 110 Net Stableford Points. For the\u00a0Best Individual Gross Performance,\u00a0essentially a measure of the best golfers in the event \u2013\u00a0Ranganath VT\u00a0of Swing Masters, Bengaluru topped with 93 Gross Stableford Points followed by\u00a0Aditya Gupta\u00a0of Swingers, Delhi with 86 Stableford Points.<\/p>\n Quite naturally, some of the best Individual Performances translated into strong contributions to the Team Competition \u2013 the raison d\u2019etre of \u00a0the Ballantine\u2019s Team-Am Golf Challenge. This category is decided based on the aggregate for the 3 rounds of the 3 best Net Individual Stableford scores out of a team of 4 for each round. There is only one difference. The effect of Power Play on 2 holes on each course comes into play if the player has opted for it. If a player exercises the Power Play on any or both of those 2 holes, then\u00a0 a net par of better fetches double the Stableford Points, but a net bogie brings\u00a0 \u2013 3 and a net double bogie or worse brings\u00a0 \u2013 4. This variation can cause huge swings and teams that held their nerve prevailed. One of them was the\u00a0Swing Masters ( comprising B K Prabhakara, Muralidhar KR, Rajesh Kumar and Ranganath VT)\u00a0 of Bengaluru\u00a0who finished with 324 points to top the team event, beating their closest rivals\u00a0Hot Shots of Delhi\u00a0by just 2 points.\u00a0Swingers also from Delhi\u00a0finished in the 3rd<\/sup>\u00a0place with 315 points.<\/p>\n The Ballantine\u2019s Team-Am Golf Challenge was concluded with a prize and gala dinner evening at the centrally located Sofitel, Sukhumvit, which also served as the host hotel for the event. Support from all sponsors \u2013 Ballantine\u2019s, Standard Chartered Bank, Tourism Authority of Thailand and Dell went a long way in making this event a huge success.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 186 golfers competed at this edition! Bangkok, Thailand 27 \u2013 31 October 2014 The 5th\u00a0edition of the\u00a0Ballantine\u2019s Team- Am Golf Challenge\u00a0was in one of the most visited destination for Indians \u2013 Bangkok in Thailand. But it was for a reason, other than its popularity. The idea was to showcase the quality of golfing in and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[353],"tags":[114,53,341],"class_list":["post-353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-where-to-golf","tag-bangkok","tag-golf-events","tag-thailand","has-thumb"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golftripz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golftripz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golftripz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golftripz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golftripz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.golftripz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3933,"href":"https:\/\/www.golftripz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/3933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golftripz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golftripz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golftripz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golftripz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}For Pictures \u00a0of the event, go to our\u00a0Facebook page.<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n