The 131st Sri Lanka Amateur Golf Championship and Sri Lanka Ladies Amateur Open Golf Championship will tee off at the Royal Colombo Golf Club (RCGC) from January 20 to 24 sponsored by Douglas and Sons Limited – DSL (Continental Tyres).
Over 100 golfers will take part in the championship including foreign players. Indian players have confirmed their participation while Pakistan, Bangladesh and Thailand golfers who are also billed to take part are yet to confirm their participation. Around 25 ladies golfers will participate in the Ladies Open Championship.
Sri Lanka Amateur Golf Championship is the second oldest amateur golf championship in the world, after the British Amateur Golf Championship, initiated in 1891.
The first ever Amateur Golf Championship of Ceylon was played in Nuwara Eliya in March 1891 and J.W. Govan of the Nuwara Eliya Golf Club (NEGC) was the champion. The second championship conducted by the Colombo Golf Club at Galle Face Green in October in the same year was won by J.N. Campbell also from NEGC, who took revenge by defeating J.W. Govan, to whom he lost in the inaugural championship. After that Govan won the next two championships played in April and October 1892, played alternatively in Nuwara Eliya and Galle Face Green in Colombo.
The three De Saram brothers – Beauchamp, Fred and E.R. became the first Ceylonese to play in the championship in 1912. The championship was interrupted by the First World War from 1915 to 1919. Then from 1920 to 1939 Ceylonese golfers made a greater impact in the championship, when Timothy De Silva won the title as first Ceylonese in 1923. Bertie E. Weerasinghe won in 1929 becoming the second Ceylonese to win the Ceylon Amateur. The championship was disrupted again by the Second World War from 1940 to 1945 and was resumed in 1946 since then it has had an unbroken run. After the Second World War period from 1946 to 1963, the legendary Pin Fernando made his mark among the British majority amateur golfers by winning the championship on nine occasions, with C. Upali Senanayake the only other Ceylonese to win in 1963.
1964 was a water washed year for the championship, with most of the British golfers having left Ceylon, in that official national teams from India and Pakistan competed in the event for the first time and have continued to do so, with additional teams from Bangladesh, Thailand too participating annually.
Legendary Pin Fernando won the title a record eleven occasions while K. Nandasena Perera burst on the scene in 1983 and captured the renamed Sri Lanka Amateur Golf Championship consecutively for three years in 1988, 89 and 90 and the All-India Amateur Golf Championship twice and of course the Silver Medal at the Beijing Asian Games in 1990. N. Thangaraja is the last Sri Lankan who has won the title since 2013.
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