‘Dream come true’ for national team trio of Bahrain

TDT | Manama                                                      

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

The opportunity to play in the Bahrain Championship presented by Bapco Energies has been a dream come true for three of the Kingdom’s top national team golfers.

Fahad Abdulla Sultan Mubarak, Khalifa Al Meraisi and Ahmed Al Zayed were part of the 132-player field, featuring some of the DP World Tour’s biggest stars, who took to the fairways for the four-round, 72-hole competition.

Although the Bahraini amateur golfers did not make the cut after the second day, they cherish the experience of competing against their professional counterparts along their home course at The Royal Golf Club.

“It’s a dream come true,” 28-yearold Mubarak told TDT. “Since I was a young kid, I used to see some of these players on TV with my dad and wished to play against them one day.

Now, I am here and there are just no words that can really describe the feeling.” “It is a very good chance for us to play against top professionals,” added 32-year-old Al Meraisi. “All of Bahrain is happy we are competing in this tournament.”

The Bahraini trio highlighted that the return of the DP World Tour to the Kingdom after 13 years will have a lasting impact both on the game in Bahrain and personally, for themselves.

Improve

“This tournament will improve golf in the country for sure and for me, as a national team player, it will improve my golf level after getting more experience playing with the best players in the world,” said 25-year-old Al Zayed. Mubarak commented: “I’ve been playing golf for Bahrain all my life and this week in the DP World Tour made me learn the biggest lessons.”

Al Meraisi added: “We are all amateur golfers here in Bahrain but to get to play in this tournament gave us the opportunity to show our game.

That gave us a little pressure, but it was a very good experience.”

Mubarak expressed his joy in the exceptional organisation by Bahrain for the championship and was amazed by the huge turnout of fans.

“It is really mind-blowing seeing the effort that has been put into this tournament this week; it will guarantee even more success for the Kingdom in the following years,” he said.

“I’ve never felt this nervous in my whole golfing career, even as a national team player; I’ve never seen a crowd as much as I saw this week cheering and supporting me,” Mubarak added. “It was an amazing experience and hopefully we can play more tournaments like this to perform best under pressure.”

Al Meraisi carded a 21-over-par 165 over the first two rounds, while Mubarak finished one shot behind. Al Zayed was 37-over-par with a 181 total over two days.