Fairway to Pilani

BITSAA East Coast had its fifth annual BITSAA-TIE Golf Event - 'Fairway to Pilani' on July 14. The weather was a near-perfect 80 degrees. The food was awesome! Heineken and Stella Artois flowed from the tap. The dinner was worthy of the highest Zagat rating. This year's outing marked a series of firsts. In the absence of senior pros like Casey, Paddy, Davy, and Ravi, a new generation of golfers (if anyone on the other side of 40 could be called that) took the silverware.

The tournament's winners were Renchy Thomas ('89), Arun Ramachandra ('88), Vikram Ramachandra and Krishna Kumar 'KK' Amrithalingam ('83). The numbers in brackets are a reference to theirgraduating year from Pilani, not their score. Thanks mainly to KK's efforts, an incredible 80, the team averaged amatch winning 92. They took home the glittering Best Team awards sponsored by Radiant Systems.

Sandeep Arora ('91), Srinivas Alladi, Samar Mishra ('91), and Rakesh Nangia ('93) won the Second Place Team Prize sponsored by AXA Equitable with an average score of 95.

KK was the best golfer by miles and Arun and Vikram also won the longest drive and closest to pin contests. But in keeping with BITS Pilani tradition of awarding jobs, degrees, and prizes fairly and equitably to all, the aforementioned gents became ineligible foradditional prizes.

Merrill Lynch Best Golfer award was won by Kalyan Gullapallo who ended the day with an impressive 86, just a few drives behind KK.Nick Nachbur was on hand to give the glitteriing prize to Kal.

Manish Shah received the Longest Drive Trophy from Vipul Mallick whose firm AXA Advisors sponsored the award. Namitha Kansal,the lone representative of the fairer sex, won the Wissen Inc sponsored Best Lady Golfer awardeasily. Perhaps mindful of Namitha's golfing abilities, the only other lady participant did not show up.

Joe Cofone was the recipient of the Closest to Pin sponsored by Wissen Inc.

Sponsors won some of the other prizes - Nick Nachbur won the Ram Tech Systems Back Nine Trophy with an incredible 51. Ram Tech Systems Front Nine Trophy was won by Krishna Kambhampati, who shot a 46 on the Front Nine. Krishna was four shots behind Kal's 42 on the Front Nine. Satish Paul won the AXA Advisors Best Putting award for his incredible 38 foot effort on the 16th.

Since the tournament began in 2002, the competition at the bottom of the leader board has been more intense than at the top. With that in mind, a second trophy was created for the clearly golf-challenged. The trophy aptly titled 'Most Fore's and Sixes' was sponsored by Dreamcricket.com and Bridge-X. It was won by Sudhakar who lived by the adage 'grass is greener on the other side' and nearly always aimed at the golfers on the adjacent fairway, in one case even managing to clear the top of the trees behind the hole on the 15th.The balltraveled around 100 yards into the fairway of the 16th! This was intended to be a tee-shot for the Par-3 15th. His team mate Venu spent a ton of time in the sands of Cranbury.

For once, Jay Raju did not get the Worst Golfer award! Having just become a father, he stayed home and the golf course's bird population rejoiced. Their joy was short lived, for there emerged a new claimant for Jay's throne. This special trophy was won by Kiran Hari of AXA Advisors. Kiran, a sponsor, celebrated the victory by offering to sponsor more such events.

In closing, organizers Sandeep Nalgundwar, Venu Palaparthi, and Perry Venugopal thanked the participants, TIE and the many sponsors without whose help this event would not have been possible. Venu Palaparthi introduced the new chief of BITSAA International, Krishna Hegde, to the participants. He also thanked the participants for helping BITSAA East Coast to fully endow two merit plus need based scholarships in Pilani. Golf is just one of the many ways we raise funds for BITSAA initiatives.

In all, some 35 participants enjoyed the scenery, the food, and the golf at Cranbury.

Sandpaper Team would also like to extend a big thanks to the sponsors for this event: Gold sponsor - Radiant Systems, Dinner sponsor – Merrill Lynch, Silver Sponsors – Ran Tech Systems, AXA Advisors, Wissen Inc, AXA Equitable and Special thanks to Bridge-x and Dreamcricket.com

Oh by the way, the BITSAA-TIE Annual Cricket Event is around the corner (mid-September) and Dreamcricket.com has promised a spectacular event on New Jersey's only astro-turf cricket pitch this time. Knock your bats and get ready!