In recent days, an anonymous article has been circulating in the golfer community with the content that some young athletes are admitted to the World Amateur Rankings (WAGR) through "re relationship", instead of competing openly and transparently.
Sharing with Lao Dong Newspaper about this information, Mr. Vu Nguyen - Vice President and General Secretary of the Vietnam Golf Association (VGA) said:
"VGA encourages localities to organize golf tournaments for 3 days, then calculate ranking points for athletes, but not many localities can do it. There are many VGA awards that have supported sending results to the world rankings. However, in Vietnam, there are 3 units that can send results, not just VGA. Therefore, there may be cases where results are not sent through VGA".
"However, there is absolutely no such thing as not competing but getting results. The tournament organizer may only focus on members, without expanding, but they will all follow the WAGR scoring standard".
Anonimous Facebook posts also use many acronyms such as going to the back door, WAGR VIP, WAGR running network and give some examples. In which, a female athlete in the 3rd stage of VGA Junior Tour is said to be competing from a red tee (shorttee) but is given the same score as competing from a white tee - a mandatory condition to qualify to submit points to WAGR.
Explaining this mistake, VGA Vice President, Mr. Vu Nguyen added:
"There are cases where female athletes hit the red tee in the U13 table (with 3 people), other girls hit the white tee in the U18 table (5 people). But when the results synthesized, they calculated the two female tables, so the mistake occurred. When we discovered, we immediately reported to WAGR.
"The tournament had errors in the summary of results. When discovered, we sent it and requested WAGR to resolve it, in compliance with the organization's regulations".
VGA representative affirmed that they always encourage athletes to be counted on the rankings.
"If localities organize tournaments and give athletes points, the VGA always encourages them. But the tournaments must meet standards and regulations. The more people are ranked, the more we have an advantage in the international arena, towards the development of Vietnamese golf.
From 3 tournaments/year, Vietnam now has more than 50 golf tournaments/year, very good for the movement. We hope that everyone will accompany Vietnamese golf, the playgrounds must be transparent and fair, creating conditions for all young athletes to go abroad", Mr. Vu Nguyen shared.
The homepage of the Vietnam Golf Association (VGA) also confirmed errors in scoring for a female athlete.
"Regarding the content that a female athlete competes from Red Tee but is calculated as the result from white tee: This is a technical error in the process of synthesizing the result, when the transcript submitted to the system does not specify the tee that the athletes played."
"Immediately after the discovery, the tournament organizers proactively contacted WAGR to report the incident and requested them to consider handling it according to international regulations. The organizing committee fully respects and accepts all decisions from WAGR related to this issue," the article on VGA stated.
According to the regulations of the WAGR rankings managed by R&A and USGA, recording results in the rankings requires strict compliance with the number of rounds, competition conditions, tee used and number of athletes.
