After six challenging qualifying rounds, the Grand Final of the World Amateur Inter-Team Golf Championship (WAITGC) has finally arrived at the Tiara Melaka Golf & Country Club, Melaka.
The Grand Final, which started today until 20 November, sees the participation of 30 teams, with 12 teams from Brunei, 9 teams from Australia, 2 teams each from Japan and Indonesia, 1 team each from China and Singapore and 3 teams from Malaysia.
The Tiara Melaka Golf & Country Club, which is designed by renowned golf course architects Nelson-Wright-Haworth, has three nine-hole layouts – Lake, Meadow and Woodland – and a clubhouse boasting a full range of facilities. Sculpted from approximately 360 acres of pristine land, golfers can tee off alongside towering stands of trees and play across natural lakes. Its undulating fairways are aesthetically pleasing as many holes are set upon natural slopes, tilts and slants. The golf course offers a variety of challenges, from easy holes to those that place a high demand on accurate and precise shots.
This is the 21st edition of WAITGC, billed as the only amateur golf circuit in the world organised by a country’s Tourism Board. This year’s WAITGC has attracted a total of 131 teams from Australia, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore. They participated in six qualifying rounds, which were held in various golf courses in the country, from March to October 2014.
To golfers, the tournament is more than just a gateway for them to compete against golfers from other countries, or to test their talent and skills and conquer some of the best fairways and greens in the country; it is also a perfect holiday package, where they get to visit some of the country’s best tourist attractions.
Golf tourism has been identified as one of the key priority sectors to increase the nation’s tourism contribution to the economy, and has in fact been underscored in the country’s Economic Transformation Programme (ETP). Last year, golf tourism receipts amounted to RM304 million compared to RM296 million in 2012. This year, Malaysia aims to push that figure to RM310 million.
WAITGC is Tourism Malaysia’s initiative to promote the country as a top-of-mind golf destination in the region, attracting more than 500 international amateur golfers and spouses annually. Since its debut in 1994, WAITGC has emerged as a well-regarded tournament and one of the highly anticipated golfing events in the region.
It is played in Strokeplay gross for the gross category and Stableford for the nett and senior category. In each preliminary round, the top three teams in the gross category and the top two teams in the nett category qualify for the all-expense paid WAITGC 2014 Grand Final.
The World Amateur Inter-Team Golf Championship is managed by the Golf Club Managers Association of Malaysia (GCMAM) and sanctioned by the Malaysian Golf Association (MGA).
