Ikeja Golf Club on Saturday launched Ikeja Golf Club Professional Development Fund with the aim of producing young and talented golfers.
The Captain of the club for 2022/2023 executive, Taiwo Joda said the initiative was borne out of a desire to help golfers with raw talents and potentials but facing financially difficulty, unbundling their talents and skills.
Joda stated this at the event marking the end of 2022 Inaugural Tournament at the club’s house, Ikeja, Lagos.
“This is an epoch event for me and I am very proud to be associated with the launching of Ikeja Golf Club Professional Development Fund. It has always been at the top of my mind that the game of golf must be taken to the next level. And again, if you look around, the best investment you can make is in people.
“The best investment you can make is unbundling talents and bringing them to the next level, especially those who aspire to greatness. One of the major challenges around us as a country is high level of poverty. “There are people with more raw talents and great potentials but because they cannot afford to equip themselves; either with resources or pay for the training that is required to shape them and improve the skills what you realize is that they drop off. Close to mine is a case of a gentle man who turned out to be skilled and gifted golf player but because there was no sponsor he had to drop off and become a professional driver,” Joda stated.
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He added: “If you see what sport, especially golf is doing in big economy and the international community; we know that we are really at the start up stage in Nigeria. And that is the vision that propelled me to put people who love the game of gold together and say let us start developing and unbundling talents.
“Let’s us start professional academy and as you witnessed today, it is a thing of joy and we were able to put together about 15 million naira from this initiative alone and there are lots of promises and I look forward in the next coming years to see a lot of professionals and corporate Organizations come to support this dream so that we would begin to have young talents play the game of golf to professional level. I am committed to this and I am very excited with the kind of sponsors we received. “He added
Meanwhile, at the end of two-day inaugural tournament, trophies and prizes were handed over to winners in various categories. The Best Net trophy award went to Christopher Obije while Muyideen Olaitan emerged as runners up.
Bidemi Babatunde Ojo emerged winner in Gross category while Alhaji Rasak Muritala emerged runners up. The Guest trophy was handed to Daniel Pofi and Nyam Emmanuel came second. Also, Goerge Taylor came first in the Veteran game while Olatunde Alamu came second.