Focus on Snow, Indiza in Safari Tour at Limuru

Muthaiga Golf Club’s professional Greg Snow, is the man to watch again as he leads a field of 43 professionals from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to the third leg of the seven-event Safari Golf Tour at Limuru Country Club.

Greg, who has been enjoying an excellent form over the past six months, beat long hitting Dismas Indiza in the third hole of a sudden death play-off at the par 72 Vet Lab Sports Club course, to claim the second leg of the series last month.

However a few weeks later, the Mumias-based Indiza produced his usual magic, to claim the Uganda Open title with an impressive score of 10 under par at Entebbe Golf Club Uganda where Snow finished four shots behind in second place.

Besides the two arch-rivals, the event whose first round is set for Sunday after Saturday’s Pro-Am at the same venue, there are other leading professionals who also going for the top prize in the Sh1 million purse where the winner will take home Sh150,000.

They include Golf Park’s David Wakhu, who won the first leg at Nyali Golf and Country Club in Mombasa and who returned to the Coast early this month to claim the 54-hole Diani Beach Masters crown.

Thika Sports Club’s Simon Ngige, who tied for eighth place in the Uganda Open, Sigona’s John Wangai and Justus Madoya from the Great Rift Valley Resort in Naivasha, Windsor’s Riz Charania and Vet Lab’s Nelson Simwa and Mathew Omondi, Alfred Nandwa Railways), Sujan Shah (Sigona) and home pros John Kagiri and James Karanja will also be out to upstage Snow and Indiza.

From Uganda, Philip Kasozi who found the going tough during the second leg at Vet Lab, is back again to try his luck at Limuru this time accompanied by Abbey Bagalana while Tanzania will represented by the long hitting Nuru Mollel from Arusha Gymkhana Club.

But before Sunday’s first round, the pros will team up with a big field of over 100 amateurs in Saturday’s Pro-Am.

On Friday the pros were expected to conduct a golf clinic to juniors also at Limuru.

Speaking ahead of the tournament, the Kenya Open Golf Championship tournament director Patrick Obath said all the arrangements for the event were all in place and that the pros were all set for the event.

“We are excited to once again host players from the region and look forward to a highly competitive five days of Golf,” said Obath. Dismas Indiza leads in the series after his back-to-back runner up finishes in Nyali and Vet Lab, which earned him 38 points, three ahead of Snow with David Wakhu following in third place.

“We are excited to see how the series is playing out and the level of competition, we have so far seen two different winners in the two legs and we can already see the growth in the general standard of play, which was our aim when we started the series.”

The Safari Tour, which has been organised by the Kenya Open Golf Limited, is aimed at preparing Kenyan pro golfers for the 2019 Kenya Open Golf Championship. From Limuru the next stop over will be Thika Greens on November 10-14 before action returns to Nairobi’s Karen Country Club from December 15-19.

The last two legs will take place on January 12-16, 2019 and the grand finale in February at a yet-to-be-named venue. The top eight players after the grand finale will earn an automatic ticket to the Kenya Open at Karen in March 2019.