By DANIELLA APIYO AND AMANDA DAMARIS

Professional action resumes on October 4 with the Safari Tour after more than six months of in activity, following the disruption of sports by the coronavirus pandemic in March.
This was announced on Friday by the Kenya Open Golf Limited (KOGL) tournament director Patrick Obath who said the Tour will have seven legs shared between Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda before the final leg in Kenya.
“We have had a break of slightly more than six months without professional golf, which means that we have lost half a season so far and it is high time we resume. Our protocols are ready and set to be approved by the government any time,” Obath said.
He added: “The Safari Golf Tour is back and we will have three back-to-back events from October 4. Then Uganda will host three events as well and Rwanda will host one, before action returns to Kenya.”
The announcement is good news to local golf enthusiasts and the professional golfers who were yarning for action since the suspension of all sports in March.
“Foreigners coming for the Kenyan events must have valid Covid 19 certificates and during the competition we will not have a lot of waiting time and the prize giving ceremony will have very minimal attendance,” Obath said.
He added: “ The tour will be used to qualify for next year’s Kenya Open Golf Championships which is part of the European Tour and where we have 10 slots. Eight of the 10 available slots will be taken by Kenyan pros, while the remaining two slots we have left open for foreign players taking part in the Safari Tour.”
Obath said the tournament organisers had changed the qualifying format as they will now look at a player’s overall performance in three Safari Tour series dating back to 2018, to pick qualifiers for next year’s Kenya Open.
“Since we didn’t have Kenya Open Golf this year and we had qualified players, it means there slots are gone, but we have come up with a new format where we will use a three-year rolling series results, where the first year will count for 10 per cent, the second year will count for 20 per cent and the third year which begins on October 4 will count for 70 per cent,” Obath said.
The 2020-2021 season of the Safari Tour is expected to have a minimum of 10 events with at
least one each played in Uganda and Rwanda. There will be a total of eight tournaments in Kenya
and each of the 10 events is expected to have a minimum prize purse of Sh1 million.
“This has been a difficult time for sports people in the world. We are grateful to the Kenya Open
Golf Limited for announcing the start of the Safari Tour. This is the best news that we as
professional golfers have received in a long time.” said John Wangai, the Captain of Professional Golfers of Kenya.

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