The 8th Quaid-e-Azam Amateur Golf Championship will tee off on Friday (today) at the Lahore Gymkhana Club Golf Course here. Addressing a press conference on Thursday, Shaukat Javed, Convener Golf at Lahore Gymkhana, stated that eligible to participate in this grand event were registered amateurs with a handicap of 14 and below. “Being a national event, it has attracted skilled golf players from all over the country. Undoubtedly, these contenders have the capacity to demonstrate excellent golfing skills, and when these aspirants are competing, it is a treat to follow them and watch how they produce quality scores through skillful application of champion like abilities and unmatched consistency whereby they carve out victories for themselves which bring them honours and glory and attractive prizes,” he added. Also present on the occasion were Omer Zia, Captain Golf, Khawaja Pervaiz Saeed, Director Media, and Mir Maaz Mehmood, chief of the sponsoring companies Lampro Mellon, Sifive and Risc. Omer shared that besides the top amateurs, also eligible to participate were senior amateur golf players, veterans and women. He said that amateurs with handicap of 14 and below will compete over 36 holes while senior amateurs above 55 years of age and ladies will compete over 18 holes. As for the veterans above 70 years, they will compete over 9 holes. And the category of veterans over 80 years will compete over 6 holes. Khawaja Pervaiz said that in numerical terms the competing hopefuls were 213 with amateur competitors being 120, senior amateurs 63, women 20, veterans in age bracket 70 to 80 are 40 and veterans above 80 years are eight. The defending champion is Ameer Khawaja of Sialkot. He will be defending his title.