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Hindustan Times

India's rebel franchise golf league likely to start in January

New Delhi: The inaugural edition of the rebel Indian Golf Premier League (IGPL) will take place next January in a six-team, home and away format, league director Manav Jain announced on Tuesday. The league will be played across four weeks and will involve 60 golfers -- 10 in each team. The launch of the Indian Golf Premier League. (IGPL) The franchises are expected to be based in Delhi, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Kolkata, and Mumbai, although a formal announcement is expected in October- November. Each franchise will have an icon player. Indian stalwarts Shiv Kapoor, Gaganjeet Bhullar, Jyoti Randhawa, Jeev Milkha Singh and SSP Chawrasia are expected to don the role. 'We will have a home and away concept for the first three weeks, which will eventually lead to the grand finale week,' Jain said. The players will be picked from a 'strategic auction' that will be held later this year,. The league will be played in a no cut, three-day stroke play format. 'There will be no financial exchange to get the players. For the first three years, all the players have been contracted by us and they are part of the package that we offer to the franchise owners. The franchises will have notional money to build the best team,' Jain said. The auction pool will comprise golfers drawn from the IGPL Tour, Indian Golf Union (IGU) and Women's Golf Association of India (WGAI). The IGPL Tour, a proposed entity parallel to the official Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI), is expected to take off in September. Spread across six cities and 10 weeks, it will also be held in a three-day, no-cut format. PGTI president Kapil Dev wrote to all its members last month warning of disciplinary action if they participate in the rebel tour. Jain hoped IGPL and PGTI could co-exist. 'There is enough room for two tours to survive. Unfortunately we could not come to any agreement with the PGTI. We waited to work with the PGTI for almost 15 months and once we could not come to an agreement, we had to make good on our promises to our own investors, our own partner ecosystem. We had to pivot and we decided to create the tour in this form,' he said. 'Every week, we will have six invitations that can be extended to anybody who is wishing to play.'