Soweto Country Club host the Joburg Open Pro-Am 2017 in Pimville

The City of Johannesburg will from today and tomorrow, stage the 2017 edition of the Joburg Open Pro-Am tournament at the Soweto Country Club in Pimville.

The Joburg Open Pro Am tournament was scheduled as a precursor (February 2) to the Joburg Open tournament which took place on February 23 to 26.

The tournament did not take place as planned after the playing field was waterlogged and declared unplayable following heavy rains earlier that week.

Following the postponement a decision was taken to take the Pro-Am to Soweto Country Club.

This decision was informed by the City’s objective to change the face of golf in Johannesburg and take the big tournaments to the people irrespective of the class.

Bringing tournaments such as this one comes with a number of benefits for the Soweto Country Club. These include:

• To showcase the new clubhouse and expose potential sponsors to the Soweto Country Club for the development of parts 2 and 3 of the project

• Contribute to revenue generation for the running and maintenance of the Soweto Country Club

• Contribute to the township economy by:

• Creating  employment opportunities for the people of Soweto during this period Encouraging the people of Soweto to book and utilize the venue for their own events

The City also wants to build civic pride and encourage the community of Pimville to take ownership of the facility and protect it from vandalism. The community has an opportunity to book the club for events like wedding, social club meetings, lucheons etc.

The City of Johannesburg is fully behind the event and has provided services through its entities as follows:

• Pikitup has done a clean-up of the area and provided 240 litres bins that will remain here after the event.
• City Parks has done the clean-up of the golf course
• Joburg Water has sorted the water pressure problem at the club house
• City Power connected provided electricity to all temporary structures as this is an Eskom area.

The CEO of the Royal Johannesburg and Kensington Golf Club, the host venue for the Joburg Open, visited Soweto to assess the state of the golf course and provided rakes for the bunkers.

Royal Johannesburg and Kensington Golf Club also committed to training the green keeping staff on the maintenance of the golf course after the Pro-Am tournament.

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