KAREN MASTERS
Andy Watt Tournament
Director Karen Masters 2019
spoke to T-OFF at the end of
the highly successful event.
Q: What are the successes of this
year’s event?
A: Well, it’s been a fabulous event.
The weather has been kind to us, it’s
been tremendous. The players have
come; they’ve thoroughly enjoyed
by displaying some great golf. I am
really happy that a few Kenyans
made the cut-line. The spectators
had a great time. It has fulfilled our
objectives. I am really happy about
the whole thing. We are in the third
year, we started small as part of
the 80 year celebrations for Karen
Club and now we’ve turned it into a
very recognizable international golf
competition. Karen Country Club
is actually quite unique, globally
we’ve had Magical Kenya Open
in March and the Karen Masters
in June. There are no clubs in the
world that probably hold two major
international men’s golf competitions,
within six months’ period. We are in
Kenya doing that, so it great for the
country, it great for the sport and we
are really happy.
Q: What does this imply in terms
of the prospects and growth of this
tournament?
A: I think it augurs really well.
From the sponsors, they say it has
been really great watching people
streaming in to watch the players,
the parties have been really good.
A lot of people coming in, so their
brands have been exposed quite
nicely which is really great to their
liking and the players have had a
great time and so they will go home
and talk about Karen Country club
and the nice course and what a nice
course and nice event it is to play in
and that would definitely encourage
more people to come in, in future.
The other thing we would like to
do is to up the prize money next
year, just to keep the interest going
for the pros, as obviously they earn
their money by winning! So if we
can get some more money behind
it, it would be great! The guys down
at Vipingo are very keen to put in a
second competition. So we would
have Karen Masters and then people
would go down to Vipingo to play a
second competition. everything ready for them to play
and it’s been really good. We have
it now to a fine act, I mean we
have our processes and systems in
place now. We boast of a fabulous
management team here at Karen.
The grounds team are really, really
good. They know how to prepare the
course to competition standards and
the nice thing about Karen is that the
members’ get behind you and when
we need volunteers to do marshaling
and scoring and all the other things
it takes to make the event run
smoothly, the membership are very
supportive.
Q: Any idea what this second
competition would be? Q: What were your high moments
during the event?
A: That one, am not really sure!
That’s up to them. They are looking
at it and trying to see how they
can get the whole thing together in
terms of sponsorship. That would
be lovely, it’s nice to go from the
city to the coast, exposing the two
facets of Kenya. Playing on the edge
of the Mara and as well as at the
end of it, we can even have the third
depending how the two go. A: For me the real big highlight
was that, we set this thing out
to support both the Professional
Golfers Association (PGK) and the
development of the professional
game in Africa. And to have nine
out of the 33 Kenyans make the cut
that is 15 percent. That’s fabulous,
that is really, really good and I think
we’ve seen through the Safari Tour,
Magical Kenya Open and through
the Karen Masters, the Kenya players
have had much more exposure. This
actually helps in developing their
game much better and we are seeing
the benefits. It’s even great that
one Kenyan made it to the top 10
finish. The other thing that has really
gone on well, was the junior golf
clinics, we did on the chipping green,
putting green and nearest to the
pin competitions. That went down
really well and that way you focus
on development of the professional
game as well as encouraging
the youngsters and that’s been
absolutely fantastic. All I can say it’s
been a great event!
Q: What is the rate of
organizational success of this
event?
A: I think we did well. I will never
give anybody 100 percent. We
are in the mid to high 90’s. We’ve
learnt a lot. We’ve staged many
competitions here for a long time,
we are obviously working with Kenya
Open Golf Limited on the Kenya
Open for many years and so we’ve
learnt as a club how to stage these
things. The Sunshine Tour organizers
are great people to work with, they
come and manage the players’ side
and the competition side we get