CLAY­TON CLARKE

Sport Cor­re­spon­dent

Robin Lewis was elect­ed pres­i­dent of the T&T Golf As­so­ci­a­tion (TTGA) at the TTGA’s an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing in May. Lewis, who re­places Wayne Bap­tiste at the helm of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, says among the ob­jec­tives of the new TTGA Board is get­ting more women play­ing golf and more fund­ing for the sport, which are among the plans of the new board.

Lewis, who pre­vi­ous­ly served as the TTGA’s vice pres­i­dent, adds the lo­cal gov­ern­ing body for golf will be pro­vid­ing more train­ing for women who want to play the game.

“We had a cou­ple of women en­gage­ments across clubs across the coun­try. We had close to 50 ladies com­ing to those tu­to­ri­als. We in­tend to run those again this year to try and build the mo­men­tum around get­ting women in­volved,” he said.

In 2024, the TTGA host­ed its first-ever Ladies Open Golf Tour­na­ment in Oc­to­ber.

The lo­cal golf boss fur­ther shares that gen­er­at­ing funds to ex­e­cute the pro­grammes in the lo­cal golf­ing fra­ter­ni­ty is para­mount.

“One of our goals is to get up a Fi­nance and Mar­ket­ing Com­mit­tee be­cause I don’t like to see us go beg­ging the gov­ern­ment cap in hand. We need to have a clear­ly de­fined pro­gramme for fund­ing the sport over the long term. It is not easy and very cost­ly to send teams away.”

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence to an­nounce this coun­try’s teams to the Caribbean Am­a­teur Golf Cham­pi­onships (in Bar­ba­dos from Ju­ly 2 to 4) and the Caribbean Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships (in Puer­to Ri­co from Ju­ly 27 to Au­gust 1) at the St An­drews Golf Club in Mar­aval on May 29, Lewis ex­plained that mak­ing golf more ac­ces­si­ble is al­so on the TTGA’s agen­da.

“The sport is not go­ing for the elite in this coun­try. It is go­ing to be for every­one to play, and this board is go­ing to en­sure we de­vel­op the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to al­low who­ev­er­wants to play this sport to come and play this sport.”

He high­light­ed the ef­forts to get the sport in­tro­duced to young­sters across the na­tion, say­ing, “We have re­ceived ap­proval from the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, and we have start­ed the en­gage­ment of rolling out golf to schools. That is a tough en­gage­ment. This is a sport we would like to have every­one play. Re­cent­ly, we did a SNAG (Start­ing New At Golf) pro­gramme, and we took kids from Beetham and Mor­vant and in­tro­duced them to the sport. We had more than 100 kids com­ing out. It is our in­ten­tion to move and grow the sport by tak­ing it out to com­mu­ni­ties.”

The TTGA broke new ground in 2024 when coach­es were trained to teach per­sons with phys­i­cal and men­tal chal­lenges.

“With re­gards to dif­fer­ent­ly-abled, we have coach­es who have cer­ti­fied. One of our goals is to have a team at the 2027 World Spe­cial Olympics Games. We have start­ed the jour­ney (and we have a lot of work to do, but we will seek to achieve that very im­por­tant mile­stone be­cause I do be­lieve in en­sur­ing equal­i­ty for all).”

Bap­tiste will serve on the board as sec­re­tary and act­ing vice pres­i­dent. Garth Chevrotiere will hold the po­si­tion of as­sis­tant sec­re­tary, and Joel Jack as trea­sur­er. The ju­nior co­or­di­na­tor du­ties will be led by Kalam Sookoor, while Ju­lian Boodram is the ladies co­or­di­na­tor and Lennox Willk­son is the To­ba­go co­or­di­na­tor. Mar­sha Rae Leben will car­ry out the func­tions of pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer.

Mean­while, Par­lia­ment Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs David Nakhid gave some tips to the play­ers from his days as a pro­fes­sion­al foot­baller. The for­mer na­tion­al se­nior men’s mid­field­er en­cour­aged them to de­vel­op the qual­i­ties need­ed for them to suc­ceed.

“Hard work, dis­ci­pline, re­silience, courage, and hu­mil­i­ty (are al­so) tal­ents. Look at the ones who made it from their hard work and ded­i­ca­tion. While oth­er peo­ple were par­ty­ing, you were home sleep­ing be­cause you need­ed that rest. You need to con­cen­trate and vi­su­alise, es­pe­cial­ly in golf,” said Nakhid, who played pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball in Bel­gium, Switzer­land, Greece, Lebanon, Swe­den, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and the USA.

He urged the na­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives to work hard to fol­low in the foot­steps of Stephen Ames and move in­to the pro­fes­sion­al ranks.

“You nev­er know where that next Stephen Ames will come from. I know (for­mer pro play­er) Car­los Sexy Baynes. This can’t be an anom­aly where once in a while some­body comes up. It is so im­por­tant to re­main fo­cused, and these are habits that take you through life.”

The 64-year-old gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor ad­vised them to be­lieve in their abil­i­ties.

“Golf is the most men­tal sport, I think, in the world. You can’t miss (or) fal­ter for a sec­ond be­cause once you break that, men­tal­ly, all of a sud­den you lose the con­fi­dence. As you know in top-lev­el sport (once) the con­fi­dence goes, that is it. So how do you keep that con­fi­dence? You keep that con­fi­dence by con­stant dis­ci­pline.”

Nakhid, who played in 35 match­es for T&T be­tween 1992 and 2005, stressed the im­por­tance of self-mo­ti­va­tion in golf.

“Why is golf a dif­fi­cult game? Be­cause it is you in the spot­light. In foot­ball, if I was hav­ing a bad game, I could have re­lied on the oth­er (play­ers). I could have re­lied on Dwight (Yorke), Rus­sell (Lat­apy), or (An­cil) El­cock. I had peo­ple I could have re­lied on to help me lift my game (but in golf, it is all down to you).”