Fuelled by its partnership with logistics major DP World, the Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI) will introduce several co-sanctioned tour events in the next calendar year while also looking to increase the prize money for its competitions. Speaking to the media on the second day of the DP World India Championship, PGTI CEO Amandeep Johl underlined the tour’s vision while reflecting on the domestic season that will conclude with the ongoing tournament.
“We want our players to have more international pathways. We want to stage more co-sanctioned events—not only with the DP World Tour, but also at the Asian Development Tour level. “The aim is to create more opportunities to earn world-ranking points and help our players work towards Olympic qualification. We are concerned about our players’ world rankings. “We don’t want to cramp the calendar. PGTI president Kapil Dev pointed to the lack of access to quality courses within India as one of the major impediments to the game’s growth. “There are many good courses where our professionals cannot easily go and practice. They have to go through the process of getting access and paying a fee. “We’re looking at other states and new venues. In Assam, we’ve traditionally gone to Digboi for the Indian Oil tournament, but we’re exploring another city as well. The state government is interested in golf tourism and developing the sport, and we’re engaging with them. We received an excellent response in Jammu and Kashmir. We also want to build on events such as the Dilip Tirkey Invitational in Odisha.
The number of tournaments on the domestic tour, however, is unlikely to increase even though the PGTI is inclined to raise the prize purse to ₹ 1.5 crore- ₹ 2 crore. The number of tournaments will be between 25-30, but the prize money will go up. You’ll see more events offering a purse of ₹ 1.5 crore- ₹ 2 crore in the coming year,” he said. If we could open those doors, even for our top 50 players, and allow them to practice in their own cities, I believe it would help their performances.
We will introduce at least two ADT events, and we are already in talks with the HotelPlanner Tour, which is the challenger tour for the DP World Tour,” Johl said. Changes to the ranking system affected the points available to us, and we weren’t playing enough co-sanctioned events,” he said. They need infrastructure not just to compete, but to practice,” the cricket icon said. The intent is to keep finding new venues and expanding the game’s reach,” he said.
Johl said the PGTI has earmarked a budget of ₹ 30 lakh to support players willing to test themselves at Q-Schools abroad. A maximum of ₹ 3 lakh per player will be allocated for this purpose.
