It will be a great week for Indian golf enthusiasts as they will be witness to a golfing extravaganza that will feature the whos who of Indian golf. Barring Arjun Atwal, who is plying his trade on the PGA Tour, and Rahil Gangjee, the cream of Indian golf has descended on the Garden City for the unique $250,000 Louis Philippe Cup city-based team championship that gets under way at the picturesque KGA course here on Wednesday, according to a report in The Times Of India.
The inaugural team event couldn’t have got a better field than this. In fact, this is probably one of the strongest fields on the PGTI Tour in a very long time. Having an array of golfing stars starting from Jeev Milkha Singh to the young star Anirban Lahiri, is a veritable feast for the golf fan. With the top 30 pros in the fray, it's arduous to predict the winner from the 10 well-matched teams.
Writing about Sanam Singh and Yuki Bhambri, the youngsters who have made it to the Davis Cup squad, Hindustan Times says that the move seems to be interesting. “Both have attitude; both hold promise. The presence of Rohan Bopanna allows for the three-singles options and that's been far denied in the Indian team,” writes the national daily, adding that India's Davis Cup selection has been largely conservative due to the abysmal crop of players that have been coming out of the system.
“One can hardly be talking about blooding young talent when the rookies fail to stay injury-free or fan their spark. The infrastructure is there, parents are throwing away as much as R50,000 a month to train their presumably-talented 14-year-olds and India also has a basic tournament structure in place. But all the fancy equipment and money can't make up for lack of brains. Let's face it -the majority of our tennis coaches are conmen. Most of them are clueless about off-court training. In fact, even when it comes to scanning the names of all the coaches that accompany various Indian senior and junior teams, it becomes quite an effort to figure out which one of them has actually produced a quasiworld-class player,” adds the report.
Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) may have overlooked double-trap marksman Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore for the London Olympics despite having the opportunity to swap a quota place, but the last word on the saga has not been said, says a report in the Hindustan Times.
A crucial meeting between the NRAI president Raninder Singh and sports ministry officials is scheduled after Holi where a decision on the 2004 Athens Olympics silver-medallist's inclusion could be taken.
The NRAI advisor, Baljeet Singh Sethi, told the Hindustan Times that the (NRAI) president would “arrive after Holi for discussions and clarify any misgivings which the ministry might have“. The NRAI had recently announced the squad for the Olympics in which it had eased out Army's Imran Hasan Khan, who had bagged the London quota in 50m rifle 3position, and given it to 10m air pistol shooter Heena Sidhu based on `current form'.
According to The Hindu report, the National Anti-Doping Appeal panel (NADAP) has reduced the suspensions of three athletes from two years to one year in doping rule violation cases involving stimulant methylhexaneamine. The panel, headed by Justice C. K. Mahajan (retd.), set aside the majority decision of the disciplinary panel to provide relief to boxers Dilbag Singh and Praveen Kumar and cyclist Vikram Duhan. All three were tested at the last National Games in Ranchi in February 2011 and since their suspensions were dated back to sample collection date they have effectively completed their one-year suspensions.
