Sports -

Hefty Michael Matthysz, son of the rugger star of yesteryear the late Noel Matthysz, happily heads the sponsorship panel of DMS Garment Technologies in their annual contribution to promote golf. The last stroke play tournament at the Ridgeways of the Royal Colombo was a huge success. 153 players in 3 categories struck the tees in excellent weather with the ‘B’ players striking the best scores.

‘A’ Division
Sanjay Wettimuny, a young stylist, playing off 5 performed splendidly and in mercurial style brought in a praiseworthy one under par nett 70 to collect the plum award. Long driving Murad Ismail, the son of former flashy golfer Iftie Ismail, came behind with 73 nett. Mithun Perera, the prodigy and son of Nandasena, struck a brilliant score of gross 70 nett 73. His handicap is plus 3. Very unusual, very rare in the ‘A’ Division category, was Capt. Navin de Silva’s complicated century – he moved into distress in uncontrollable turbulence. Sanath Wickramaratne and Tissa Jayasinghe both single figure handicappers, joined into a partnership to produce confetti.

‘B’ Division
Tae Hwan Kim made a very pleasing round of gross 80 nett 67 to win from S.M.A. Hameed on gross 86 nett 69 - both creditable performances. Priya Samarasinghe was quite tidy and pleased with himself with a nett par round of 71. There were eight smashing centuries with Ivor Mahroof producing the most confusing collections of strokes. Eight worked pretty hard in the preparation of confetti, and the main architects were Ranjan Gooneratne and Jerome Rajendran.

‘C’ Division
Lucien Ratnayake and Hemal Fernando, the renowned ‘ticker’ specialist, tied one nett 68 each. Ratnayake had a better back nine depriving the specialist of his first victory in 24 months of golf. Both celebrated on pots of tea and cream crackers. 20 in this division cracked centuries - some earth-moving, others neighbourhood disturbing. Five made small packets of confetti. It was pleasing to see a grand collection of new to the game players enjoying the outing in splendid weather.

Poolists Left Out
Notable by their absence from the playing scene and another opportunity of competitive golf lost. I counsel, keep the elitist structure and standards at the Royal Colombo. Many members have the right to expect and seek such status as it is a private club. However, no member will want you to neglect, discard or ignore the talent of the caddies. We are all aware that there are very many members who individually and collectively support the stricken caddies in different forms and then there is a wise guy who thinks that public golf courses must be built. This thought is as farcical as building bridges over water hazards.