PGTI Prez Kapil Dev, Chhattisgarh CM Vishnu Deo Sai Inaugurate Nava Raipur Open 2026

PGA Tour golf heads to Nava Raipur — but let's talk about that cricket crossover

Quick heads up, folks: I just read through this piece and had to laugh a bit. The headline leads with Kapil Dev and a state CM, and halfway through I genuinely forgot this was a golf event, not a cricket one. The cricket references are doing a lot of heavy lifting here!

The Event

The DP World PGTI Nava Raipur Open 2026 kicks off today (15 Sep) and runs through 18 Sep at the Fairway Golf & Lake Resort. It's a Rs 1 crore tournament with 132 pros — 18 overseas — competing on a par-69 course sitting beside the 450-acre Jhanjh Lake.

The Field

Indian names on the roster include Veer Ahlawat, Manu Gandas, Akshay Sharma, Honey Baisoya, Khalin Joshi and Om Prakash Chouhan. Notably, Ahlawat is also prep for the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya alongside Yuvraj Sandhu and Saptak Talwar. The international crop spans Sri Lanka, Czech Republic, Thailand, Bangladesh, Nepal, Uganda, USA, Japan, Ireland and Canada.

The Soundbite (with a wink)

Former India skipper Kapil Dev drew a nice parallel between cricket and golf: watching top pros can push juniors toward the Asian Games and Olympics. Fair point — though I'll add that from a sports-medicine view, the injury profiles are totally different. Golf's low-impact nature is a world away from the bowling-load concerns I deal with daily. Still, the discipline message lands.

My take?

Great for golf tourism in Chhattisgarh — the CEO's talking "golfing capital of India," which is bold. But honestly, the cricket branding is doing the marketing heavy lifting here. Either way, competitive sport is competitive sport. 🏌️

Source: IANS

Source: Cricketnmore