The Royal Calcutta Golf Club which will host The Telegraph Cup Golf

It has remained the perfect platform for corporate camaraderie for over 100 years, while never failing to give the city’s brand a welcome boost with every birdie sank.

As the Merchants Cup golf competition steps into its centenary year (the meet teed off in 1906, then missed two War years), it has achieved a perfect century, attracting a field of 100 teams, underlining yet again its unique chemistry with corporate Calcutta.

“This is easily the oldest mercantile sports tournament in the country and Calcutta’s pride in it is reflected in the constant expansion of the participation pyramid base. Today, we have the entire gamut, from tea to IT, liquor to real estate, represented in the field,” says Brandon D’Souza, the CEO and managing director of Tiger Sports Marketing (TSM), which runs the event.

The Telegraph Cup Golf, presented by Tata Steel in association with Ballantine’s, is broken into two categories. The Merchants Cup is open only to those corporate houses that have at least three executive golfers based in the eastern region, while The Challenge Cup gives smaller business houses an opportunity to network with their clients.

“No other city has a tournament like this. It’s not just about sport, it’s also a huge social event, and a hundred teams in the hundredth year is terrific. It only goes to show the Merchants’ Cup concept has a timelessness about it,” says former national champion “Bunny” Lakhsman Singh, spearheading the Williamson Magor challenge in the tourney for three decades now.

In a hark-back to the black-tie dinner that marked the meet’s early years, the sponsors are organising a sit-down dinner on the final night (Friday) of the tournament, inside an air-conditioned bubble on the Royal campus, with a guest list of around 800.

“The Merchants Cup is like one big family and we at the Royal are always delighted to be associated with this four-day carnival. The sit-down dinner will be a wonderful trip down memory lane and going forward, the club will be able to roll out attractive new features with the upgrade programme in full swing,” adds M.M. Singh, the CEO of RCGC.

While CEO B. Muthuraman is again leading the challenge of defending champions Tata Steel ‘A’ in the company’s centenary year, Magor, smarting under the disappointment of two fallow years after a Herculean nine-in-a-row effort, is raring to put its juggernaut back on track.

The competition remains fierce. However, for many like Sanjeev Mehra of South City Projects, which won the Challenge Cup last year and is playing the main field this time, the four hours he gets to spend with his colleagues and other corporate execs on the course is a “huge networking bonus”.

That’s what the meet was meant to be. “The Merchants Cup and the Royal are two legacies Calcutta should never lose sight of and there are so many cities across the country which would love to host something like this — it does so much to change perception. That’s why we always have the ‘19th hole’ (the popular F&B shamiana at RCGC) busy,” smiles D’Souza.