A new era in T&T golf was ush­ered in last Wednes­day with the elec­tion of Wayne Bap­tiste as the new pres­i­dent of the T&T Golf As­so­ci­a­tion (TTGA).

The for­mer vice pres­i­dent was elect­ed un­op­posed, along with sec­re­tary Kr­ish­na Samai, pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer (PRO) Kalam Sookoor and ju­nior co­or­di­na­tor Si­mon Ho­sein at a vir­tu­al an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) and elec­tion of of­fi­cers. They will serve a two-year term that will end in Ju­ly 2023.

Dur­ing that time, how­ev­er, Bap­tiste said he will work on a search-and-de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme for young po­ten­tial golfers as well as oth­er ini­ti­ates to stem the loss of fe­male golfers from the sport as seen in the re­cent past.

The pre­vi­ous ex­ec­u­tive of which Bap­tiste was a part, be­gan re­me­di­al work of the sport that will set the pace for a brighter fu­ture, Bap­tiste told Guardian Me­dia Sports: “I think the sport of golf is head­ing in the right di­rec­tion. I was the vice pres­i­dent last year and I worked with a great team. What we ac­tu­al­ly did was to strength­en the gov­er­nance of the as­so­ci­a­tion by look­ing at strength­en­ing the in­clu­sive­ness of mem­ber clubs, the re­la­tion­ship of mem­ber clubs, and I am see­ing a bright fu­ture if we con­tin­ue in that di­rec­tion,” Bap­tiste ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing to the new golf boss: “As a leader, I would like to see the or­gan­i­sa­tion move for­ward in a pos­i­tive di­rec­tion and in do­ing that, we have to watch how we man­age the or­gan­i­sa­tion as it re­lates to a strate­gic plan, a de­vel­op­ment plan, an op­er­a­tional plan that dri­ves the as­so­ci­a­tion. When we ex­am­ine the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion and al­so the ex­pen­di­ture for na­tion­al teams and de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes, we have to sit back and ex­am­ine what di­rec­tion we need to take in steer­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion for­ward, but present­ly, if we con­tin­ue in the di­rec­tion that we’re go­ing, my main fo­cus will be the de­vel­op­ment of ju­nior golf. To­geth­er with in­tro­duc­ing more fe­males in­to golf, and lead­er­ship and man­age­r­i­al po­si­tions in the or­gan­i­sa­tion, I think that’s the di­rec­tion we will be look­ing at.”

Bap­tiste is con­vinced that his or­gan­i­sa­tion will have the task of un­earthing new tal­ent and de­vel­op­ing them on its own if it wants to have play­ers to stand out on the lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stages for both males and fe­males ath­letes.

“If you want to get fu­ture na­tion­al play­ers, we have to de­vel­op them. We have to go out and find them at the schools, in the com­mu­ni­ties and de­vel­op them in­to play­ers. Prop­er struc­ture and process­es, so that these play­ers can de­vel­op in­to elite play­ers, and from elite play­ers, they can go on to top re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers, and this is the whole con­cept of tak­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion for­ward.

We have ob­served over the last few years that we have lost a lot of fe­male golfers and as such we are look­ing at for­mu­lat­ing a struc­ture where we can en­cour­age fe­males to get back in­to the sport. One of the things we’re look­ing at is ask­ing all mem­ber clubs to adopt a school close to the golf cours­es where the T&TGA can work with them to see if we can en­cour­age more fe­male golfers to train and de­vel­op them so that we will have a big­ger group to chose from for na­tion­al tri­als and na­tion­al team build­ing.”