Windy Shao windysjf@hotmail.com AFTER five months of competition, 10 amateur golf teams entered the finals of the first Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) Golf League tournament at Mission Hills Dongguan on Thursday and Friday, with the Nanfeng golf team winning the annual championship with a total score of 564. Following Nanfeng are Dongguan Eagles and Shenzhen Dream finishing second and third, respectively. The GBA League is an “upgraded version” of Mission Hills amateur teams’ tour tournament. The number of participating teams has gone up to 32, covering all the top amateur teams from Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and other GBA cities. The 10 finalists will be invited to participate in the National Amateur Golf Super League in November. Han Zhishan, general manager of Mission Hills Golf Club, said that more teams participated, and the competitiveness was much higher this year than last year’s amateur tour tournament. Han said: “In the past five months, by challenging different venues and different competition systems, each team has fully demonstrated their own strength and team cohesion. The players showed the spirit of amateur golfers in the GBA!” The champions will receive 12 sets of guest tickets for the 2022 Mission Hills Golfathon and one Mission Hills Haikou supreme black stone card. As a pioneer in China’s golf industry, Mission Hills Group has been committed to popularizing golf and cultivating young talents for many years. It has held several highly influential amateur golf events in China, such as the Mission Hills Golfathon, which has been held for 18 consecutive years. Tenniel Chu, founder of the GBA Golf League and vice chairman of Mission Hills Group, said that as Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao will jointly host the 2025 National Games, more chances will come for GBA youths to have cultural and sports exchanges. “The GBA Golf League is just the beginning. We will also use a variety of event forms to promote cultural and sports exchanges between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. For example, we will organize college students’ golf league, youth tennis tournament, youth obstacle races and so on, to make our sports competition system more diversified,” Chu said. | 