By V. Krishnaswamy, IANS,
Singapore : Top Indian golfer Jeev Milkha Singh has quite a few landmarks to his name. This week could see him add another one. He could become only the second player and the fourth overall on Asian Tour to cross $2 million dollar in earnings.
Jeev is less than $34,000 short of the mark with earnings of $1,966,691 in 115 starts so far. He is also about $134,000 short of Mark Brown, who leads the 2008 Asian Tour Order of Merit.
Thongchai Jaidee in 2006 became the first Asian Tour player to cross $2 million in earnings and he was followed by Jyoti Randhawa and Thaworn Wiratchant this year.
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Chopra feels nostalgic in Singapore
Swedish golfer of Indian origin Daniel Chopra feels nostalgic here. For the second time in less than a month he is catching up with his old golfing friends here and recalled his early trips to Singapore when he was young.
“I have a lot of friends here and have a lot of history here dating back from my junior golf days. When I was young, I always flew out to Singapore once a year to get golf balls as we couldn’t get it back then in India. I still remember the flight numbers, which were SQ407 coming here and SQ408 heading back,” said Chopra.
“I would buy like six to 10 dozen of golf balls which was my year’s supply. So I had to be very careful in not losing the balls.”
He was full of praise for Barclays, for supporting the tournament. “In these economic times, it’s amazing that they’ve chosen to back golf in a big way.”
The Barclays Singapore Open offer prize money worth $5 million.
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Tee for Trees
Ricoh, one of the co-sponsors, has come up with a novel idea called ‘Tee for Trees’. Ricoh will have an annual tree-planting event in Singapore Nov 22 – the Annual Tree Planting Day. And the number of trees to be planted will be directly linked to the golfers’ performance on the final day of the Singapore Open.
Ricoh has pledged to plant a tree for every birdie, five trees for an eagle and 20 trees for an albatross and hole-in-one during the final day. The trees will be planted at Mt. Imbiah, Sentosa.