From L-R – Keerthana Rajeev, Zara Anand, Ranveer Mitroo, Anshul Mishra
As the Asia Pacific Juniors kicked off this week in Manila, 15-yr-old Zara Anand from Noida opened with 74, 74, placing her 8th in the Girls’ section while Anshul Mishra, also 15 scored 72 , 74 to stand tied for 9th among the boys.
Ranveer Mitroo, the other Indian boy is at 14th with rounds of 74,75 while the 2nd Indian girl on the IGU team, Keerthana Nair of Bangalore, has scored 81 and 75 to lie at 23rd.
With one round remaining, Team India are lagging far behind leaders South Korea and further without a proper coach or manager, they lack the required support to keep up with the competition who enjoy the backing of a high-performance team.
The Indian Golf Union (IGU) has made a series of recent high profile announcements promising improvements, so we wonder why there is no actual coach or experienced manager accompanying these teenagers who are under pressure to perform.
The APGC Junior Championship sees two boys and two girls from member countries compete for individual and team prizes over 54-holes of stroke play. As usual, South Korea is dominating, followed by Thailand, whose player development has left India far behind in the past decade. Even Sri Lanka and Vietnam are ahead of India this week.
India’s best juniors like Kartik Singh among the boys and Avani Prashanth among the girls, both who could have been favourites to win the APGC titles, are NOT on the Indian squad this week since they had made other commitments before getting information on this important annual international event.
When will things change in this continuous mismanagement of the Indian national teams?