Kuwaiti team clinch Golf Friendship Cup
Ansari, Al-Bader finish second at GCC tournament in Qatar
By Iddris Seidu
KUWAIT CITY, March 27: The annual Golf Friendship Cup ended Saturday with the Kuwaiti team winning for the first time, with a big margin, 14.5 to 9.5 points against the expatriate team.
In another victory at the GCC Golf tournament held in Qatar, Kuwaiti 16 year duo Ali Ansari and Ahmad Al-Bader were on the podium for the second position overall in the under 18 category at the GCC Golf Tournament last week.
The friendship Cup is a very important golf tournament held annually in Kuwait. It is a tournament that brings together expats who love the sport of golf to compete with Kuwaitis. Expats can be from anywhere, any part of the world; South Africans, Germans, Swiss, Danes, Australians, English, Scots, Irish etc.
It is open to all nationalities. It shows especially at this time that there is a lot of turmoil over the world, it is very important to get sports like Golf to bring people together in friendly tournaments such as this to bond with people from all over the world and consolidate friendships.
The Kuwait team has lost the tournament three years in a row, and this year have managed to win by a big margin, 14.5 to 9.5 points. Last year the Kuwaiti team was overwhelmed so this year as captain of the Kuwait national team, “We put an excellent team together, we had people who were not feeling very well but still came and played and actually gave us points and we managed to win by a good comfortable margin and we hope this success will continue for the near future”, said Mazen Ansari, the Captain of the Kuwaiti team, as he spoke to the Arab Times at the awarding ceremony Saturday at the Sahara Golf Club.
A photo during the Golf Friendship Cup awarding of winners.
”We are all winners in the end, in my opinion; we make friends and consolidate the friendships through golf, and keep them everlasting. The friendship Cup is much more than a golf tournament. It brings people from all over the world together and then consolidates the friendship without regard to religion, gender, or racial boundaries or restrictions. In my eyes the friendship Cup comes with the message that we live in a small world in which we must live together in peace and harmony, The Friendship Cup is an important concept, one that will remain on the calendar for years to come. There is nothing more nerve wracking than the Friendship Cup and i like what our youngsters are learning from competitions such as the Friendship Cup” added Ansari.
The importance of mental strength and having the temptation to win resides in the boys as they have self confidence that you can see in their eyes as well as the body language. As people strive to build and support the sport of golf in Kuwait, the Friendship Cup without a doubt is the most popular and most sought after tournament on the calendar.
The other celebration for the win of the individual format for the Kuwait national team in which Ali won the GCC tournament in Doha, Qatar, in the under 18 age group. The tournament was played in the Doha Golf Club which is a professional golf Club, in which he managed to win the tournament by a good margin where the stroke differential was 9 points between first and second places. He beat boys that were two years older than he is.
The other important accomplishment was the second place finish, as the Kuwaiti team was comprised of only two instead of three players. All the boys gave reasons that they could not make it to the tournament, but the two boys managed to come home with the silver medal in the category. With the individual, Ali won the first place and when they tallied the two teams’ scores for three days together, they came out with the silver medal. The Kuwaiti team won the silver medal despite the fact they had no coaches, while all other teams had professional coaches. “We need coaches for the boys”, said Ansari.