RYAN BA­CHOO

It will be a tru­ly in­ter­na­tion­al af­fair at the 112th T&T Am­a­teur Golf Cham­pi­onships and third T&T Open as Cana­di­an Dustin Ris­don will be back to de­fend his ti­tle. The event tees off in two weeks at St An­drews Golf Course in Mo­ka, Mar­aval.

There are al­ready 90 en­trants for this year’s edi­tion and tour­na­ment di­rec­tor Kris­t­ian Govia, said they are look­ing to­wards a field of 140, at the launch at its golf course on Wednes­day. Through­out its his­to­ry, there have been fluc­tu­a­tions be­tween a pro­fes­sion­al and am­a­teur tour­na­ment, how­ev­er, the num­bers are ex­treme­ly en­cour­ag­ing for this year.

De­fend­ing cham­pi­on Ris­don and 10 oth­ers from Cana­da are con­firmed to com­pete along with six golfers from the Unit­ed States, sev­en from Bar­ba­dos, five from Cu­ra­cao, one each from Chile, St Maarten, Venezuela and Ja­maica and 55 from T&T.

The num­ber of golfers and coun­tries par­tic­i­pat­ing are ex­pect­ed to ex­pand clos­er to the tour­na­ment, which be­gins with the first an­nu­al Pro Am one-day tour­na­ment on March 20. This is where one pro golfer will team up with three am­a­teurs in a shot­gun start.

A day lat­er, four flights of golfers will take to the course for four rounds of golf spread across four days from March 21-24.

Ris­don, who won the pro di­vi­sion in 2018, was sur­prised at the in­ter­na­tion­al field that is com­ing to this year’s cham­pi­onship.

He said, "It’s al­ways tough to de­fend any tour­na­ment or win any tour­na­ment. I’m sure there are go­ing to be some new pros that come in this year, so it will all come down to who can with­stand the four days of golf."

The pros will be com­pet­ing for a first prize purse worth $US7500, as well as three spots in the Ja­maica Clas­sic, which is an event on the PGA Lati­noamer­i­ca tour.

Ris­don will have his hands full with sev­er­al lo­cal stars chal­leng­ing him for the crown. They in­clude An­tho­ny Gill, Bernard Ben­ny, Eng­land based T&T golfer Ben­jamin Mar­tin and Matthew Mar­quez from T&T, who now re­sides in the Unit­ed States.

Among the am­a­teurs, col­lege stu­dents Liam Bry­den and Wan Ju Lee will be the lo­cal high­light while Richard Ca­ma­cho is al­most cer­tain to com­pete in the cham­pi­onship di­vi­sion.

This is one of the old­est golf tour­na­ments in the west­ern hemi­sphere and was won by T&T pro golfer Stephen Ames in 1981 and 1987. It will be pre­ced­ed by two prac­tice rounds of golf from March 18-19.