Golf gaining its prominence in the subcontinent, till date considered a rich man’s lazy pursuit, is planning to go the IPL way. The tremendous endorsement of the sport fans had inspired the Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI), Louis Philippe and RNGM on Friday joined hands to introduce a format of Golf to be played involving the top 16 national professional golfers, at Bangalore.

Come March 2012, Karnataka Golf Association will play host to the Louise Philippe Cup with prize monies of a whooping US $ 250,000, slated to be India’s richest domestic tournament. To be played between eight cities based teams of India’s top professional golfers. In all, eight teams, each comprising of the three top professional golfers from each city/region – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Gurgaon, Lucknow and Chandigarh - will be taking part. Of the three members, two will be selected based on the PGTI 2011 final ranking as of end December and the third player will be a team choice. The PGTI will be looking at a sports channel for coverage of the Louis Philippe Cup as the current contract with CNBC TV18 ends by January 2012.

The teams (with current rankings of probable players):
Delhi: Rashid Khan (3), Chiragh Kumar (7), Ashok Kumar (10) and Shiv Kapur; Bangalore: Anirban Lahiri (5), Abhishek Jha (22) and R. Murthy (24); Kolkata: Feroz Ali Mollah (12), Shankar Das (15), Arjun Atwal and S.S.P. Chowrasia; Mumbai: Mukesh Kumar (1) and Kunal Bhasin (44); Chennai: Mandeo Pathania (25), Gaurav Ghei (31) and Sandeep Syal (52); Chandigarh: Gaganjeet Bhullar (4), Harendra Gupta (17) and Sujjan Singh (27); Lucknow: Sanjay Kumar (8), Vijay Kumar (14) and Manoj Kumar (87); Gurgaon: Himmat Singh Rai (2), Digvijay Singh (23) and Jyoti Randhawa.

Cities and the regions around them which don’t have players within the PGTI’s Order of merit of professional golfers can import a player from other cities/regions. This will give the teams a choice to pick India golfers that cannot maintain their PGTI rankings because they play primarily overseas.