Saturday Sep 21, 2024
Saturday Sep 21, 2024
Friday, 10 July 2020 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Captain Navin De Silva, serving for 35 years as a Senior Pilot with the National Carrier Sri Lankan Airlines and having held Senior management positions of Chief Pilot and Head of Flight Operations too, has taken over the ‘Controls’ at the prestigious and historic Royal Colombo Golf Club.
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Capt. Navin de Silva |
The RCGC celebrating its 140th year, experienced a significant challenge when the COVID-19 crisis froze the holding of the Annual General Meeting usually scheduled in the last week of March locked-down by the force of nature.
Captain Navin was duly elected unanimously as Captain of the Royal Colombo Golf Club at the Annual General Meeting of the RCGC on 2 July. Capt. Navin, a former Wesleyite, Sri Lanka Schools Cricket Captain and a keen single figure handicap Golfer who has won several local and international Golf events, also served as the Chairman of the National Golf Selection Committee.
Captain Navin is blessed with an Executive Committee boasting an excellent blend of experience and youthful exuberance. Michael Perera Magala, a single handicap golfer and respected Past Captain was elected President. Jehaan Ismail, an esteemed alumnus of the University of Colombo, a keen golfer and a Member of the RCGC Committee for several years, takes office as the Vice-Captain of the Club.
Going down the memory lane, former Ceylon Cricket Captain F. C. De Saram (Derek) served with distinction on the RCGC Committee for several years as the Ground Secretary and his Son-in-Law Neil Chanmugam who also played Cricket for Ceylon and later toured England & Australia with the Sri Lanka Cricket Team as Manager prior to Sri Lanka receiving Test Status, also served on the RCGC Committee and subsequently served as Captain of the Club.
Significantly since then, Mahela Jayawardene a more recent Captain of Sri Lanka Cricket and who himself is a single handicapper, becomes the first Sri Lanka Test Cricketer to join the EXCO of the RCGC as a Committee Member for 2020/2021 at the invitation of Captain Navin.
Amrith De Soysa, five time winner of the RCGC Club Championship and the youngest in its’ history at the age of 15, and a leading Amateur Golfer in Sri Lanka having won 12 Club Championships island-wide, makes his debut within the RCGC, is Committee elected as ‘Honorary Marketing & Communications Secretary’ for the ensuing year.
The newly elected Executive Committee boasts of an excellent balance worthy of steering the RCGC in to the new decade, surfacing from a fresh wave of natures’ bloom, changing the face of economics to virtual reality, notwithstanding the importance of physical wellbeing and the diplomacy of Golf, the signature sport of a well-groomed nation.
The Colombo Golf Club was founded on 13 March 1879, initially based on Galle Face Green, with the then Club House gradually having transformed into the Galle Face Hotel that stands large today. Golf, known as the oldest sport played in Ceylon by the ruling British, was granted The Alfred Model Farm at Borella, named after Prince Alfred, son of Queen Victoria, acquired by the Colombo Golf Club and declared open on 9 December 1896, by His Excellency Sir Joseph West Ridgeway, the Governor of Ceylon.
It was on 7 June 1928, that a despatch from the Secretary of State for the Colonies intimating that His Majesty has been pleased to confer upon the Colombo Golf Club the privilege of using the prefix “Royal” and of being known in future as “The Royal Colombo Golf Club”, with the request to display the portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, Head of the Commonwealth of Nations within its premises.
With the passage of time the Late W.P. Fernando (Pin) who became the first Ceylonese to be appointed Captain of the RCGC in 1964 and who was followed by the Late Dr. L. V.R. Fernando (Lance) in 1966 and the Late C. P. G. Abeyewardene (Chrisso) in 1968, these appointments facilitated the dominance of Ceylonese holding office at the RCGC during the transition of British Companies to Ceylon ownership as well. After 1970, the majority of the British in Ceylon left the island nation and within that period Ceylon was renamed “The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka”.
ROYAL COLOMBO GOLF CLUB OFFICE BEARERS & GENERAL COMMITTEE MEMBERS FOR THE YEAR 2020/2021
