ELEPHANT Hills continues to be a hive of golfing activity with the Zimbabwe junior golf team playing in a three-countries tournament with Namibia and Kenya.
This will surely be a welcome development for Elephant Hills Golf Club as they usually do not host a lot of golf tournaments. Over the last month they have had the privilege of hosting three big tournaments — namely the Elephant Hills Open, United Nations World Tour Organisation Invitational Golf Day and this week’s Junior Three-Countries.
Hopefully this will increase the visibility of golf and the number of golfers in the resort town. Traditionally at this time of the year, a lot of companies host their corporate golf days.
Companies invite their clients or potential clients for a fun-filled afternoon away from the office. Unfortunately a worrying trend creeping up is that a lot of people accept the invitation to play in the corporate golf day without having previously stepped on to the golf course.
There is a common misconception that golf is a very easy game that takes less than five minutes to master. Sadly this is far from the truth as players can take up to two years just to master the basics.
So what tends to happen at these corporates is that first-time golfers realise the game is not as simple as they thought it was, they then end up having to endure a miserable afternoon.
On the other hand, their playing partners also get irritated as they have to give instructions and advice to non-golfers. What was meant to be a fun-filled afternoon ends up being a miserable day for all those playing in the group.
My advice to anyone intending to play in a corporate golf day is to go for some golf lessons with a teaching professional or a more experienced golfer and to at least play a couple of rounds prior to the corporate golf day so they can get an idea of expectations.
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The Harare province championships were held a few weeks back at Police Golf Course. These championships were won by Scott Vincent on a magnificent score of 22-under par. His tournament consisted of rounds of 64, 69, 68 and 65.
His score was good enough to give him a massive 17-shot lead over second-placed Clive Nguru who had finished the tournament on a very commendable score of five-under par.
His performance was probably the best ever witnessed in Zimbabwe amateur golf history. The 21-year-old Vincent, on a golf scholarship at Virginia Tech University in the United States, showed that the exposure he is getting from playing there is yielding positive results.
For him to participate in the local tournament during his holiday break assisted the local players, as he had an opportunity to share with them what he had learnt from his stay in the States. Surely if he continues with such impressive performances, we will in the next few years see his name written alongside Rory Mcllroy and Rickie Fowler.
