Lae to host seniors golf tour

FOR the first time the seniors golf tour is coming to Papua New Guinea with Lae Golf Club hosting the three-day Legends Tour event this week with A$80,000 (about K192,000) in prize money on offer.
The tournament, which will feature Australia’s former high profile pro Peter Senior, is sponsored by Trukai Industries, Digicel and JV Investments with support from a number of corporate sponsors and will see 36 professional golfers convening at the LGC course.
Apart from Australia two players are coming from Europe, a couple from Asia to participate in the legends tour in the Morobe capital. The professionals will be joined by local amateur golfers, both women and men, in a pro-am competition.
LGC president Phil Hommerloff said his club had lobbied with the Professional Golf Association (PGA) 18 months ago and had managed to secure the event with the help of the major sponsors.
“This is the first time for LGC and Papua New Guinea to host this seniors tour event and we are pretty excited about it and expects this to be an ongoing very successful event for years to come,” he said.
“These seniors tours have been running for a number of years in Australia for professional golfers over 50 and are very popular.”
LGC general manager Scott Golden said the event would be headlined by Senior, 63, one of Australia’s most colorful professional golfers over the last 40 years.
“Peter has participated in all major tournament including the US Open, US Masters, US PGA and British Open. Senior has won number of Australian Opens, more Australian PGA tournaments and a number of Australian masters titles as well,” Golden said.
“Peter is one of the founding fathers of the new era of golf. He came through around the same time as the ‘Great White Shark’ Greg Norman, Ian Baker-Finch, Wayne Grady, and Craig Parry through 1980s to the 90s. Senior is most high profile player in the game that we will have here,’ he said of the Queensland-based golfer.
“The rest of the golfers comes with big wraps and the club is looking really forward to having Brad Burns back. Brad holds the course record here in Lae that he set net 63 in 2000 which is quiet low and knows what life in Lae is all about. He understands Morobe and understands LGC so we’re really looking forward seeing him.”