Kathmandu, May 12:

Surya Nepal Golf Tour 2008, a pioneering and first-of-its-kind effort to promote professional golfing tour in Nepal, will tee off on Tuesday with Central Open here at the Le Meridien Gokarna Forest Golf Resort and Spa.

Central Open is the first in a series of professional golf events lined up for the Tour, apart from the most-coveted Surya Nepal Masters. The Tour-opening event will feature 25 Nepali professional golfers competing over four days for the total prize money of Rs 300,000.

It will offer an opportunity for the top local professional golfers to hone their talents, further improve their skills and get in shape for more competitions ahead. Leading the list of top golfers include Deepak Thapa Magar, winner of the Surya Nepal Masters in 2007, Deepak Acharya, Pashupati Sharma, Ramesh Nagarkoti, Toran Bahadur Shahi, Shiv Ram Shrestha and Radheshyam Thapa among others.

The entire concept of Tour including Surya Nepal Masters has been pioneered and sponsored

by Nepal’s largest private enterprise, Surya Nepal and sanctioned by Nepal Professional Golf Association, with the objective of promoting and upgrading professionalism in golf and promote local talents to compete at international level.

Initiated this year, the Tour comprises of at least six professional golf tournaments. Surya Nepal Golf Tour will eventually be developed into an umbrella for all the professional golfing events played within Nepal.

As part of its initiative to promote Sports Tourism, Surya Nepal sponsored the ninth SAARC Golf Championship in Nepal in October last year, which put Nepal on the region’s golfing map.

In 2007, Surya Nepal took yet another encouraging initiative of sponsoring the participation of three Nepali professional golfers in the five of the IPGA events covering the Eastern Swing and Delhi.