The first Delhi Golf Club League with 18 teams with 18 players each and a mentor and coach, each team after a payment of ₹15 Lakh, will be played from October 14th to 31st on India’s second oldest course in the heart of the capital.
The match play tournament is played in the four-ball-better-ball format. Two players from each team play their own ball. The lowest score or the better ball between the two on each hole is taken as the team’s score for that hole.
Other major golf clubs in Calcutta, Mumbai and Bengaluru running their leagues have been a motivator while the standard of DGC membership would ensure that 31% of the participants are single handicap players, ”Lieutenant General (AR) BS Sandhu, chairman of the tournament committee, he said in a media briefing on Wednesday.
Each owner can choose 10 players who must be members of the club. At least one player must be over 70 years old, there must be a female player and only one player under 20 may be admitted to ensure broader representation. There will be no prize money and owners are not paying any attention to return on investment while marketing is done by reaching out to members and their friends, he said.
The league consists of a round robin phase followed by knockout rounds. During the playoffs, the teams will field seven pairs (14 players). The 18 teams appear in four groups, with two each qualifying for the knockout quarter-finals.
Gaurav Ghei, one of the most prominent DGC players and three-time winner of the Asian Tour, and two-time Indian Open champion Ali Sher will be among the mentors. Ghei said the league had to wait to start while the greens were renewed in 2018 and then the course was redesigned while the pandemic halted tournaments.
The DGC League will also be the forerunner of the first DGC Open, an Asian Tour event whose start has been postponed and will now take place in March.