Contributed
Ziadie... New president of Caribbean Golf Association.Tym Glaser, Associate Editor - Sport
SPORT, IF you didn't already know, is a journey full of peaks and troughs whether they be for a player, writer, fan or administrator.
The ride is fun, a nuisance, an adrenaline rush, a chore, it hurts, it soothes and, in the grander scheme of things, is an insignificant factor of our lives that we'd still rather not do without.
To see a fine example of the full definition, go to the Jamaica alphabet of sport and thumb through until you reach, near the very end, the name Ziadie, Arturo (aka Arthur, Turo).
'Turo' is 67 going on 17 at times and then about 97 at others when talk comes around to his beloved game - golf.
After 14 years as president of the Jamaica Golf Association (JGA), Ziadie was usurped during a March challenge by his former treasurer Ossie Lee in one of the more well-publicised elections in recent local sport history and down his stocks went.
A mere five months later, the semi-retired business consultant and co-owner of fast food restaurants in Liguanea and Manor Park is the man in charge of regional golf as president of the Caribbean Golf Association (CGA) ... up we go ... catch your breath.
Ziadie, a former Jamaica Labour Party councillor and current staunch campaigner as elections loom, treads carefully around anything to do with his former stomping ground and the new JGA regime but sees clearly defined challenges for the sport in the region during his two-year tenure, which can be renewed for two more years at its completion.
"There are three things we are going to be working on this current two-year term," Ziadie, who replaced Barbadian Dr Oscar Jordan as CGA head, said on Friday at the Constant Spring Golf Club.
"The first is the further development of junior golf; secondly the development of ladies golf and thirdly, development for the Caribbean to be the No. 1 tourist destination for golf," he said.
"There is also a fourth item which we are seriously looking at and that is the development of professional golf in the region. One of our five tournaments is the Caribbean Open and that was started primarily to encourage professional golfers in the Caribbean to take part.
"One thing I find is that the amateurs here have very limited succession in the golf life so we hope to provide springboard for them to get into Tours in the United States and South America (Tour de Las Americas). When you get to a certain achievement level in amateur golf, there is nowhere else to go."
Pushing the 'development' theme, Ziadie said emphasis would be placed on building from the juniors up.
"We are going to have at least five professionals this year who will travel around the region and assist the territories, particularly those which don't have professional training. We need to go into those places and encourage them (the players). Some countries' players just don't take the game seriously.
"Hopefully, from this we will get some girls coming out of the junior programmes because, apart from Puerto Rico, the ladies golf in the region is really very poor," Ziadie, who saw hosts Puerto Rico sweep all titles at the Caribbean Amateur Golf Championships (CAGC) earlier this month, said.
The most tricky part of the Ziadie's three-pronged plan will be getting some of the regional government's to buy into the fact that golf tourism can be a great money spinner and he makes stark comparisons between some CAGC member countries and Jamaica.
"You take a country like Barbados. Twenty-five years ago, we had ten golf courses, today we have 11. Barbados had half a golf course then and now they have four and two more are being built in a population of about 300,000," he said.
"The Dominican Republic has 30-odd course and 25 years ago we were way ahead of them. Some of the territories must understand the importance of golf, it is no longer an elitist sport, it is a sport that can be commercialised to the benefit of any country.
"The CGA will go to the various member countries, to organisations, to the governments to show them what is going on and the returns they can get."
The CGA currently boasts 10 member countries (the Bahamas, Barbados, the Cayman Islands, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, the Organisation of East Caribbean States (OECS), Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the US Virgin Islands) but expansion plans are under way to bring others into the golfing fold.
"We are looking to go to the Dutch Antilles and the French islands - Martinique, Guadeloupe, Curacao and Aruba within my tenure. We've had enquiries from Cuba but they say they are not ready yet but they have had observers at our tournaments," Ziadie said.
For 'Turo' it's all a case of onwards and, hopefully, upwards.
