NEW DELHI: Indian cricket legend Kapil Dev, presently serving because the president of the Skilled Golf Tour of India (PGTI), believes that athletes in different sports activities work simply as arduous as cricketers, if not tougher. Nonetheless, he feels they often don’t obtain the popularity and highlight they really deserve.
“Cricket shouldn’t be the one factor on the earth. There are different sports activities as properly. Though cricket has given me respect, face, and every part, I at all times keep that each different sportsperson additionally works very arduous. They’ve given me this chance to take a seat on this chair and if I can convey the change in golf and different sports activities, I might be very delighted and blissful,” Kapil Dev informed the reporters throughout the PGTI press convention, hosted on the Delhi Golf Membership.
Asserting the primary half of the 2025 PGTI schedule, the 66-year-old on Monday confirmed that 4 new occasions have been added to this yr’s calendar.
Go Past The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!
The schedule contains 11 occasions over 11 consecutive weeks, with a complete prize pool of Rs 15.66 crore (excluding the Indian Open).
The 2025 season will begin with the PGTI Gamers Championship in Kolkata on February 11.
This shall be adopted by ten different tournaments, together with the celebrated Kapil Dev-Grant Thornton Invitational, which can conclude the primary half of the tour within the penultimate week of April.
Among the many 4 new occasions, PGTI has launched the Chhattisgarh Open Golf Championship (February 25–28), marking its first-ever PGTI match within the area. The opposite new additions are the PGTI Invitational (April 1–4), the Indorama Open Golf Championship (April 9–12), and the Calance Open (April 15–18). The prize cash for these occasions is about at Rs 1 crore, Rs 1.5 crore, Rs 2 crore, and Rs 1 crore, respectively.
When requested concerning the notion of golf being an costly sport for the widespread individuals in India, Kapil responded, “Golf shouldn’t be dearer than cricket. Individuals imagine it’s, however that’s not true. In case you spend money on a set of golf equipment and a ball and play good golf, it may well truly be less expensive than taking part in cricket.”
One other vital improvement is the revival of PGTI’s second-tier tour after a five-year hiatus, now reintroduced as PGTI NexGen occasions.
Three PGTI NexGen tournaments, every that includes a prize purse of Rs 20 lakh, are scheduled for the primary quarter of 2025 at venues in Phillaur, Kapurthala, and Golden Greens in Gurugram.
Three worldwide occasions are set to happen as a part of the schedule. These embrace joint-sanctioned tournaments: the Indian Open (March 27–30), providing a prize purse of USD 2.25 million, and the Kolkata Problem (March 13–16) and Delhi Problem (March 20–23), every that includes a prize pool of USD 300,000.
The whole prize purse for the primary half of the 2025 season has elevated by Rs 4.5 crore in comparison with the identical interval in 2024.
Moreover, the variety of occasions has grown from 9 to 11, reflecting Kapil’s imaginative and prescient of offering larger alternatives to aspiring golfers.
