Mauritius — As with every junior golf development competition, the goal is rarely winning. The target is typically to enable the team to get exposure, appreciate high-level competition in the infancy of careers, and get the feel of first-class courses that may not always be available in Uganda with all due respect to the courses in the country.
Still, Shaka Kariisa Ndyabahika and Banza Matsiko Gershom were unimpressed with their opening rounds of 85 and 87 on the opening of the Africa Region VI Junior Team Championship at the Tamarina Golf and Spa resort in Mauritius on Tuesday.
“I didn’t play well,” the soft-spoken Matsiko acknowledged. “Tomorrow, however, I hope to improve. I will play better, I believe. His teammate Kariisa was more forthright. “Today we didn’t play well but tomorrow, we are going to go hard.” Kariisa, whose index is +2.3, will tee off last at 9:10am in the final group alongside Madagascar’s Matteo Rakotofiringa and Tanzania’s Ramadhani Yasin Mohamed.
Matsiko will play in the second-to-last three-ball that also includes Tanzania’s Ibrahim Juma Lukuli and Madagascar’s Romain Fitahiana Gagneux. The hosts, Mauritius, are joined by Reunion, Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda at the championship. Each team shall consist of four players (2 boys and 2 girls).
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For team scoring, the best three gross scores out of four will count towards the team’s score each day. For instance, the scores that counted on Tuesday for Uganda were Kariisa’s 85, Keisha Wiltsire Kagoro’s 86 and Matsiko’s 87. Uganda’s fourth representative at the tournament, Elizabeth Danelle Dlexik Kawalya shot 87.
In the six-team log, Uganda is fourth but coach Flavia Namakula is expecting a transformation in the next two days. “We had a tough day on the course, but I know that they can bounce back and do better tomorrow. We didn’t have the mental toughness today, on a day when the course was playing tough with some tricky pin positions,” Namakula observed. Reunion are top at +10 followed by Kenya and Mauritius at +17 and +27 respectively.
The Uganda Golf Union is insistent on offering opportunities to as many promising young golfers in the country as possible to grow the talent pool and culture in the country.