Kenya: Snow Believes a Home Player Can Win Open

Larry Ngala

29 March 2011

Nairobi — Greg Snow, who turned professional two weeks after clinching Kenya’s top amateur championship last August, believes it is the turn of the local golfers to showcase their prowess in this year’s Barclays Kenya Open which gets under way at his Muthaiga Golf Club on Thursday.

“I have prepared well, and so are the other locals, and I believe this is our year in the open,” he said.

Snow, who in 2007 became the youngest golfer in the country to win the prestigious Kenya Golf Union (KGU) Golfer of the Year Award at 16 years before he left for Odessa University in Texas, USA, says he is all set for his first Open as a pro.

“I missed last year’s open because of travelling hitches from the USA but I have been playing well since last August when I turned professional,” said the 20-year-old Snow, who started playing golf as a junior.

Snow embarked on his pro career with last year’s KCB East Africa Tour grand finale at Nyali, where he finished second behind South Africa’s top black pro James Kamte.

Three weeks ago, he shot four under par 280 at Muthaiga to claim the second leg of the 2011 KCB East Africa Golf Tour. He bowed out of his maiden Open, in 2007, having qualified after finishing fourth in the 2006 Goty series, with a poor 77.

The former Braeburn School student is among 26 Kenyans – 20 pros and six amateurs – in the first round of the 190,000-euro event that is marking its 20th anniversary in the European Challenge Tour which draws its players worldwide.

Snow started playing golf with his father, John Snow, at Kiambu on Sunday mornings at the age of six and obtained his first handicap at 10.

He competed in the Boys and Girls Championship at Muthaiga, first in the nine years and under and later the other levels in Kenya’s top junior championship, recording his first victory while in the nine years and under with 17 stableford points.

Won ‘The Bull in Season’

At 11, he won the Chairman’s Prize in 2001 with a differential of 26 but under the club rules he could only receive the junior prize. The winner’s differential was 31.

He became the youngest ever winner of the marathon 54-hole-a-day “The Bull in Season” contest at 14 and then competed in three Tannahill Easter Tournaments in a row – 2005, 2006 and 2007 – as the youngest participant ever.

Snow historically claimed his first Goty, the 2006 Karen Challenge, with a total of two over par gross as the youngest player ever to win a KGU event. In 2007, he was the youngest player ever in the Open.

He was in the senior Kenya team to the Africa Golf Championship Zone Six competition in Uganda where, in the play-offs, he came up against the top South African amateurs.

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