Six-time Major winner Sir Nick Faldo’s much-heralded global golf development programme celebrates its fifth year in Thailand when the Faldo Series event tees off in Ayutthaya on February 2.

About 100 budding golfers aged between 12 and 21 years old will compete over two days at the Muang Ake Wang Noi Golf Course, where an event of this stature is being held for the first time.

As is customary with the Faldo Series, the field will be divided into five age groups – three boys’ and two girls’ – and the winners will join Sir Nick at the seventh Asia Grand Final from March 13 to 15 at Mission Hills Golf Club in China.

Past Thai champions of the World Amateur Golf ranking event in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen include inaugural winner Nakarin Ratanakul in 2007 and girls’ winner Thidapa Suwannapura in 2010.

According to the Hong Kong-based chief executive of the Faldo Series, Tom Phillips, the programme continues its drive to boost grassroots golf in Thailand.

In association with the organisers, the Thai Students Golf Union, local school children will be encouraged to watch the competitors in action and attend a free golf clinic.

The Faldo Series has also announced its return to Lakeview Golf Club in Kunming on January 22 for the sixth consecutive year to the delight of young golfers in the Yunnan province of southwest China.

The number of participants at the award-winning Faldo-designed course in Lakeview has shot up by nearly 300 per cent in the past six years, and the organisers are expecting another record turn out this year.

In September of this year, Cambodia joined the Faldo Series Asia network – which features 18 tournaments in 15 countries in 2013 – with an event held at Angkor Golf Resort in Siem Reap.

 

 

To contact the reporter on this story: H S Manjunath at [email protected]