2022 ends on a high note for Ladies Golf

By all accounts, 2022 has been a tumultuous year for Ladies Golf in Pakistan. However, in order to better appreciate this achievement, it is worth remembering that, although ladies had been playing golf since the 60’s, the PGF’s attitude towards them had vacillated between condescending courtesy and benign neglect.

However, this underwent a dramatic change through two strategic decisions taken by two successive PGF Presidents. Firstly, in 2016, Lt Gen (retd) Zaheer, at the behest of Dr Asma Afzal Shami, sanctioned the holding of an exclusive, annual Ladies Golf Championship at the National level. Secondly, in 2017 Gen Hilal established the ‘Committee for Development of Ladies Golf,’ with Dr Shami as its Chairperson and Zeenat Ayesha, Humaira Khalid and Amber Javed as its members.

While the first was a ‘Game Changer’ from which there has been no looking back, the latter provided Women with a platform for developing Ladies Golf according to their own vision and requirements. Significantly, they used this for getting the Federal, Sindh and Punjab Golf Associations to also sanction similar events in their respective domains. They then reached out to the sponsors to regularly subsidise the travel and accommodation costs of lady golfers, thus enabling them to actually participate in these multiple tournaments.

Next, they prevailed upon the major Golf Clubs to appoint Lady Golf Captains and make them part of their Tournament Committees. They also convinced them to exempt lady golfers from paying green fees and charge them only 50% of the match fees in Tournaments. As a result, while the number of active lady golfers multiplied by over 400%, i.e. from 60 to over 260, there was a similarly astounding increase in terms of quality as we now have 20 single handicappers of whom two - HumnaAmjad and ParkhaIjaz - are scratch players.

Thus, through the tireless efforts of this Committee, Women’s Golf created an enviable niche for itself, whose climatic event was the holding of the 1st PGF International Ladies Amateur Golf Championship in Lahore in February 2020. With the unprecedented participation of seven regional countries, this became the largest international golfing event held in Pakistan in recent memory. However, in Dr Shami’s words, “This was really not about playing golf. It was about reaching out, connecting, and building bridges – and 7 bridges were indeed built.”

It is worth mentioning that Gen Hilal had granted the ladies the liberty to plan and conduct this historic event entirely on their own, with the only male official being the Chief Referee. Thus, the Head of Malaysian Women’s Golf stated, “Our stereotyped impression of Pakistani women has undergone a sea change. They are women at their best who know no bounds!” In the words of our First Lady, Begum Alvi, “This has helped Pakistan to project its soft image and also robustly emerge on the Women’s Golfing Map of the Region.” Consequently, in September 2021, Dr Shami received a special Award from Governor Punjab for “Bringing Honour to Pakistan.”

Three other initiatives undertaken in 2021 merit special mentioning. Firstly, in Nov 21, Dr Shami petitioned the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) Authorities to also include Pakistani Lady Golfers in their ranking list. Upon receiving a positive response she requested Mr Kamran, Manager PGF, to file the necessary paper work to formalise this arrangement. Since then, our Lady golfers, along with our Men, are also eligible to compete for inclusion in this prestigious international ranking. This one-step has proved to be a game changer as it has instilled a burning desire amongst our talented low handicappers to seek entry onto this listing, especially as it makes them eligible for competing in prestigious events of the International Golf Circuit.

HamnaAmjad, our National Champion, created history by becoming the first Pakistani woman to be granted entry into this list in Nov 21. The second significant initiative was the decision of the senior Lady Golfers to honour the achievements of their icons of yesteryears by holding memorial golf matches in their name. Thus, the 1st KPGA SoniWali Cup Ladies Golf Championship was conducted by Dr Shami in collaboration with Dr Ghazala Shams and Iqbal Wali, Soni’s brother, in Peshawar in Dec 2021 to honour the lady who is widely acknowledged as being the trail blazer of women’s Golf in that province. Thirdly, at the behest of Mina Zainab, the PGA decided to institute an annual, exclusive Ladies Golf Championship in honour of the Madr-e-Millat. Thus the 1st PGA Fatima Jinnah Cup was held in Lahore in Dec 21.

It goes to the credit of the PGF, the Provincial Associations and, especially our Lady Golfers, that they have jointly continued to build upon the above quoted edifice throughout 2022. In this context, the 1st Ghazala Ansari Challenge Cup Ladies Amateur Golf Championship was conducted by a team comprising Dr Shami, Bela Azam, and MamoonaAzam at Lahore Gymkhana in Feb 2022. This honoured the achievements of the legendary Ghazala Ansari who is, by far, the Best Lady Golfer ever produced by Pakistan. She totally dominated Ladies Golf throughout the 60’s winning the National Championship 6 times.

In a similar vein, FEGA decided to rename its annual Ladies event as the Yasmin Mubarik Cup to honour the achievements of Yasmin Mubarik who had been Ghazala’s closest competitor and had won the National Championship 4 times. Similarly, Mrs Mina Zainab conducted the 5th PGA Ladies Golf Championship and the 2nd Fatima Jinnah Cup in Lahore at the Royal Palm Gof Club.

Another major achievement was the succesful conduct of the PGF International Ladies Championship by Zeenat Ayesha in Islamabad in Mar 22 in which Thailand and Qatar participated. It was a matter of great pride for Pakistan that our ladies won this international event for the very first time, having lost to Thailand on two previous occasions. Another historic aspect of this event was that, for the very first time, the PGF had appointed a lady, MunazzaShaheen, to be the Chief Referee for an International Golf Championship. It is worth mentioning that she is the first Pakistani, male or female to have qualified as a Level 2 Referee from abroad, with a Distinction.

The earlier decision to seek entry to WAGR, visibly increased the participation by our single handicappers in WAGR listed championships. As a result, in 2022, three more girls joined Humna in the WAGR listing, namely ParkhaIjaz, RimshaIjaz and Aania Farooq. The first ‘payoff’ came in the form of an invitation to Humna to participate in the Women’s Amateur Asia Pacific Golf Championship in Thailand. This was, indeed, a historic first for Pakistan Ladies Golf.

Later, in May, based on Humna’s excellent performance in the Egyptian Ladies Amateur Golf Nefratiti Cup Championship, where she was the runner up, she qualified for participating in the prestigious Ladies European Tour held in Aramco Saudi Arabia. Once again, this was a Historic first that elevated the status of our ladies golf. Interestingly, it was during this event that Humna became the first Pakistani lady to become a scratch player. Since then ParkhaIjaz has also achieved scratch status.

Yet there is one important aspect that seems to have been missed out by the hierarchy of the Golfing Establishment, i.e. the conduct of the annual Junior Golf Match for under 14 golfers. The trio of Dr Shami, Iffat Zahra and Aisha Moazzam had worked very assiduously during 2020 and 2022 to hold three such events on behalf of the PGA as it was their conviction that this was the best way of creating a mechanism for ‘talent hunting’ aimed at discovering our future Golf Champions.

Whereas only 19 girls had participated in the 1st Match in 2019, 36 competed in the 2nd event, and over 60 girls participated in the 3rd Match in 2021, registering a phenomenal increase of over 250 % in 2 years! Incidentally, 9 of the original 19 have already graduated to the category of Lady Amateurs, while 12 years old Bushra Fatima reduced her handicap from 36 to 11 within one year. Therefore, one could imagine Dr Shami’s frustration at this inadvertent lapse so soon after her retirement as Chairperson Ladies Golf.

Fortunately, Mrs MunazzaShaheen unveiled a private venture entitled the Ace Junior Golf League (AJGL) that was designed to achieve the same purpose of eventually creating a much needed nursery at the grassroots level.

It aims to reach out to the less established young golfers, and help them to translate their demonstrated passion for golf into a higher level of golfing skills.

Its Inaugural Match, held at the Lahore Garrison Greens in Oct 22, attracted 100 junior golfers and was an astounding success.

Encouraged by this unprecedented level of interest exhibited by the junior golfers, she decided to raise the bar of her ambitions to taking AJGL to the international level. To actualise this she turned to Dr AsmaShami, who in her previous position of Chairperson Ladies Golf PGF, had formed an informal group of her counterparts in selected regional golfing nations. An exchange of telephone calls resulted in the receipt of an invitation from her Malaysian counterpart Ms RabeaHitul, the ex President of the Malaysian Ladies Golf Association, to “bring a few junior golfers to participate in the 22nd Sarawak International Junior Golf Premier Cup being held at Miri, Malaysia from 29 Nov – 1 Dec 22.”

It needs to be emphasised that this was a private invitation extended to an ex Chairperson by an ex-President in her capacity of being the organiser of this event. Consequently, Mrs MunizaShaheen put together a group of 13 AJGL junior golfers, none of whom had ever participated in an international golf tournament. Although the level of competition was very high 5 of our young golfers made the cut at the end of the second day.

This was an invaluable experience for our young participating golfers as it exposed them to the international standards of golfing skills that they need to aspire to. It is heartening to note that, in the words of MunizaShaheen, “AJGL will always be there for them!” However, it is hoped that the formal Golfing Establishment will also play its role as the future of Ladies Golf depends on this.