Juniors battle for strokeplay title

Top junior players Daniel Nduva and Naomi Wafula are part of the field of 55 golfers who will be contesting for the 2014 Kenya Junior Amateur Strokeplay Championship that tees off this morning at Muthaiga Golf Club.

Commonly know as “Boys and Girls Championship” the tournament is the country’s only 72-hole strokeplay event for players under the age of 18 years.

The junior players will be battling for top honours in the three-day Crown Paints sponsored event that other than offering points towards the Junior Golf Foundation (JGF) order of Merit also counts towards the World Amateur Ranking.

FINEST JUNIOR GOLFERS

Apart from Nduva and Wafula, the other players expected to challenge for the title at the par 71 Muthaiga course are bronze medallists in the recent Africa Youth Olympic Games Adel Balala and Mary Monari and newly crowned Coast Open (Barry cup 2014) champion Mathew Wahome.

Like Nduva and Balala, Monari is a member of Nyali Golf and Country Club which has over the past 10 years produced some of the finest junior golfers in the country. During last year’s Championship South Africa’s Hennie Duplessis posted an impressive four under par 280 to beat Nduva by a whole 17 shots. But with Duplessis not defending his title this year, Nduva, who is playing his last Junior Strokeplay Championship, will be the player to beat.

However, Nduva did not play well at  the Coast Open where a nine in one of the holes saw him shoot 82 in the first round a score which knocked him out of the running for the title he won last year. His main challengers will be Wahome, the South Africa based Balala, Tahir Mohammed, John Mburu and Agil Is-Haq all from Nyali.

Rose Naliaka Academy’s Wafula is the out right favourite for the girls title with Monari as her main challenger.