Majestic Setting for Narain's Captaincy Confirmation

Singapore: The 'big oak tree' that sits on the golf course side of the Augusta National clubhouse was planted when the building was completed in the late 1850s, making the tree approximately 160 years old.

Each year during the week of the Masters Tournament, this location is described as the ‘epicentre of world golf’. And with good reason.

Over the course of the past eight decades, it’s there that many thousands of meetings among golf’s power brokers have been conducted … and hundreds of deals been struck.

Added to that list can now be the handshake between Asia-Pacific Golf Confederation (APGC) Chairman Taimur Hassan Amin and Rishi Narain that sealed the latter’s appointment as non-playing captain of the men’s team for August’s Bonallack Trophy.

“It just so happened that I was at Augusta National this year and Taimur said he’d speak to me there,” said Indian Narain.

“When I met him on the Sunday during the final round, under the big tree, he officially conveyed the news that the APGC Board had agreed I would be the non-playing captain this year. Getting the news at Augusta made it more memorable,” added Narain.

A Ryder Cup-style match play event that sees the leading amateurs from the Asia-Pacific take on their counterparts from the European Golf Association (EGA), the 2023 edition of the Bonallack Trophy will take place at La Manga in Spain from August 3-5.

Launched in 1998, the event has been graced by players who have gone on to achieve success at the highest level of the professional game.

Indeed, it was fitting that Amin and Narain should meet on the day when Jon Rahm secured a first Green Jacket and fellow Major champions Cam Smith, Hideki Matsuyama, Justin Rose and Shane Lowry were among those on the course.

All five of them played in the Bonallack Trophy with Rahm part of the 2012 EGA team that triumphed in Portugal when Smith and Matsuyama were in the APGC team that was captained by Amin.

Narain, an Asian Games gold medallist for India in 1982 and a stalwart of the game in his home country over the past 40 years, said: “To be appointed captain is super exciting and a tremendous honour.

“I don’t think for me in my career there could be any bigger honour, to be honest. It means the world to me.”