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THE Nadi Airport Golf Club is aiming to unveil a new corporate plan in the new year to take the club to new heights.

NAGC president Hafif Ali says the club has recorded a profit of $22,000 for this season which was a healthy sign after running into problems last year after funds were unaccounted for.

Ali said they have set up a better audit system to keep track of the finance generated by the club.

“We hope to have an equipment roll over,” said Ali. “Some money will be set aside for maintenance of the club and the course.” The Nadi Airport course is where world number one golfer Vijay Singh learnt the sport.

Ali said the junior development programmes will continue next year. “This is the only way to help our young talents,” said Ali.

Meanwhile, there was no change in the hierarchy of the club. During its annual general meeting last week, none of the positions were contested. Ali said it was the first time none of the executives faced any opposition.

Calcutta: Sanjeev Mehra pulled off his second straight upset with a 3 & 2 win over thrice Sri Lankan amateur Open winner Simarjeet Singh at the Goodricke Eastern India amateur championship at the Royal Calcutta Golf Club on Tuesday. The event is the second leg of the Eastern Swing on the Royal Challenge Indian Golf Tour.

In the most exciting contest of the day, Keshav Misra recorded a win over Pankaj Sethi on the 23rd hole to cruise into a quarter final clash with Akshay Butta.

HS Kang knocked out top-seed Ranjit Singh with a 4 & 2 win. At the half way stage Kang was one up and never relinquished his lead after that. Another closely contested match was between Joseph Chakola and Amardip Sinh Malik in which the former prevailed one-up. Teenager Akshay Butta who sent the seasoned Manav Das to the cleaners on Monday moved into the quarter finals along with Mehra and six others courtesy a 2 & 1 victory over Girish Virk.

Mehra played the waiting game with Simarjeet, who has only himself to blame for the defeat with bogeys on the third, seventh and ninth. Sanjeev who bogeyed fewer holes, led the contest one-up after nine. Thereafter Mehra didn’t let up despite a double bogey on the 14th and Simar crumbled under the pressure.

PLAYER OF THE YEAR

• Vijay Singh: Joining Paul Runyan, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead and Tiger Woods as the only golfers with at least nine victories in one season on the PGA Tour — and supplanting Woods as the world No. 1 in the process — earns Singh the nod despite yet another stellar year by Sweden’s Annika Sorenstam. Becoming the first golfer to win at least $10 million in one season on the PGA Tour is the ultra rich gravy for Singh.

ALMOST PLAYER OF THE YEAR

• Annika Sorenstam: Winning eight times on the LPGA Tour and 10 times worldwide should be enough to earn top honors, but Sorenstam once again has been overshadowed by an equally stellar season by a male golfer in a more-dramatic setting. Singh’s pursuit of Woods proved far more compelling than Sorenstam’s demolition, once again, of an arguably less-deep, less-competitive tour than that on which the men play.

AUBURN AWARD (FOR THE OVERLOOKED, BCS-LIKE, ODD-MAN OUT)

• Retief Goosen: His four victories worldwide this year were two less than fellow South African Ernie Els, but Goosen won his second U.S. Open title this year without an inkling of fanfare while Els went winless in the majors. Phil Mickelson received more press coverage for losing at Shinnecock than the placidly unflappable Goosen did for winning.

SHOT OF THE YEAR

• Phil Mickelson: It’s silly, of course, to call one shot any more significant than the other 278 that Mickelson took in winning the Masters, but his 18-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole — and his wondrously low-level leap after it — will remain the indelible image from his first career major championship title.

SHOT OF ANY OTHER YEAR

• Craig Parry: 176 yards, 6-iron, Drain-O! Parry’s hole-out for eagle on the first hole of a playoff with Scott Verplank to win the Ford Championship at Doral not only earned him $900,000 and a Ford GT prototype racing car, it confirmed the Australian’s second PGA Tour win since 2002 after 236 winless starts in the United States. A plaque has since been dedicated on the 18th hole to commemorate Parry’s shot.

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR

• Todd Hamilton: In discussing Hamilton’s overseas journeys, the more relevant question is, Where hasn’t Hamilton played? Rather than where he has played. After wandering primarily throughout the Far East, the 39-year-old won the Honda Classic and British Open with relentless grit and a short game that won’t quit.

SELF-SERVICE MERCHANDISE AWARD

• Tiger Woods: Mr. Elin Nordegren was right to criticize the PGA of America for picking the wrong man to captain the U.S. Ryder Cup team in 2006, but he couldn’t have been any more transparent with his own choice for captain. Tom Lehman, a decent choice, got the nod, Larry Nelson, the right choice, was bypassed again, but Woods reportedly was “visibly agitated” when arguing that neighbor and close friend Mark O’Meara should have been captain at the K Club in Ireland in 2006.

“I thought he should have been captain, because of the heritage of where he’s from,” Woods said last month in Japan. “He’s Irish, … (and) he goes to the K Club every summer to fish.”

COURAGE AWARD

• Charlie Sifford: “This makes me feel like I’m a worthwhile professional golfer.”

That a man of such greatness would say as much upon his recent induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame speaks to the decades of adversity he faced and the deep well of character, courage and decency he relied upon in becoming the first black member of the PGA Tour. The 82-year-old, who joined the tour when the PGA of America’s Caucasian-only clause was finally rescinded in 1961 and later won two tour events, was emotional and gracious throughout his induction through the lifetime achievement category.

Is that ever an understatement for Sifford to earn induction that way.

CLASS AWARD

• Tie, Meg Mallon and Joey Sindelar: Endlessly gracious and respectful, these veterans couldn’t be any more alike in their professionalism. The ebullient Mallon, winner of her second career U.S. Women’s Open title, was a bubbly bright light in a summer of stoic male major winners (Goosen, Todd Hamilton, Singh). Sindelar, who won the Wachovia Championship for his first victory in 14 years, is universally liked for all the right reasons.

OH YEAH HONORS

• Tie Jay Haas, Chris Riley, Chris DiMarco: Late surges by Riley and DiMarco to make the U.S. Ryder Cup team, and Haas’ year-long excellence to warrant being a captain’s pick, all were quickly forgotten in the wake of the Europeans’ record-trouncing of the Americans in September at Oakland Hills.

BRAINLOCK AWARD

• Tie, Chris Riley, Paul Casey: Riley for begging off a second match with Woods on the second day of the Ryder Cup after proving to be the only golfer who can successfully mesh with Woods’ persona, Casey for flippantly saying “hate” motivated him and other Euros to victory in the Ryder Cup.

BRAIN FREEZE AWARD

• Greg Norman: The legendary Aussie hardly seems to make mistakes in the business world, but he’s tackling a mountain of obstacles in hoping to move his Franklin Templeton Shootout from its cool-weather November date in North Naples to a more-lucrative television date in the PGA Tour’s regular season.

GIRL POWER HOUR

• Tie, Catherine Cartwright and Kris Tamulis: The Southwest Florida high school products, both now LPGA Tour members, will carry the region’s banner on the professional tours thanks to the fading prospects of Nolan Henke and Tommy Tolles and the retirement of Terry-Jo Myers.

BAD BREAK

• Tie, Scott Verplank, spectator ankles: Verplank turned an ankle heading to a portable toilet during the third round of the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits, a new course built with mountains of dirt on a once-flat military site, and faded in the final round while pursuing a Ryder Cup berth he didn’t get. Spectators at Whistling Straits, tracked through a daily tally of turned ankles in Milwaukee-area papers during the PGA, could have told Verplank to watch where he walked.

WE’LL MISS YA

• Rodney Dangerfield, Moe Norman, Jeremy Rothenberger, Punta Gorda Country Club: The lovable antagonist from “Caddyshack,” a Canadian golf icon, an aspiring young tour professional from Fort Myers and a dilapidated Donald Ross golf course in Charlotte County were among those lost to the golf world in 2004.

Vijay Singh won nine tournaments in 2004. 2004 was know more for Tiger’s failings than Fijian’s 9 victories .

Vijay Singh won nine times on the PGA Tour in 2004, including a major championship. But nobody outside of Fiji seemed to care.

When Tiger Woods triumphed nine times in 2000 - yes, with three majors - he was anointed God-like status by media and fans alike.

When Singh managed a similar accomplishment, it was greeted with something approaching a collective yawn. Ask people who don’t follow golf what they know about Singh and you’ll be greeted by blank looks.

Ask the very same people about Woods, and they will no doubt want to know details of his recent wedding.

In a celebrity-obsessed culture, merely being the best in your craft is not enough. You need the sizzle to sell the steak, which is why the 2004 will be remembered as much for what Woods didn’t do as for what Singh did.

What Woods didn’t do was dominate golf. He won only once on the PGA Tour, at the World Golf Championships Match Play Championship in February, and finished fourth on the money list, his worst ranking since also finishing fourth in 1998.

And although he ended the year with back-to-back victories in Japan and at his own unofficial tournament in California, it remains to be seen whether he really is back to his formerly brilliant best.

On the course at least, his void in 2004 was filled by Singh, whose dominance over the second half the season - including one stretch where he won five times in six starts - was truly magnificent.

His playoff triumph at the PGA Championship was the pinnacle of his year, but he was far from content to rest on his laurels. Rarely, if ever, has a 41-year-old been so consistently brilliant.

Singh assumed the world No. 1 ranking in early September, ending Woods’ reign of more than five years, and capped off the year by not only finishing atop the money list for the second successive year, but also collecting the Vardon Trophy for the best stroke average, and the Player of the Year award as voted by his peers.

Singh’s awesome finish made it easy to forget that until July, Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els were the best players in the world, certainly in the majors. They staged a magnificent duel at the Masters, where Els fired a final-round 67, only to watch as Mickelson birdied the last hole to finally - at the age of 33 -win a long overdue major championship.

Mickelson came agonizingly close in the other three majors, losing by a collective five shots. How close he was to the Grand Slam was obscured because he went largely missing after August, conspicuous only for his dreadful performance at the Ryder Cup, where he struggled with a poor pairing and new equipment.

But at least Mickelson won a major. Els came up empty, despite contending in all four. The native of Zimbabwe lost a playoff to Todd Hamilton at the British Open and finished one shot out of a three-way playoff at the PGA Championship. He also was in the hunt at the U.S. Open until he faded with a final-round 80.

With Singh and Els at the top of the sport, it may seem as if the balance of power has shifted away from the U.S. and Europe. However, the Ryder Cup remains the game’s most compelling attraction, and this year’s installment at Oakland Hills, Michigan was no exception.

The Europeans are always underdogs based on the world rankings, but they dominated from the first shot to the last, winning by nine points for captain Bernhard Langer and leaving hapless and helpless American captain Hal Sutton to try to explain the inexplicable.

In particular, Sutton’s decision to pair Woods and Mickelson for two matches on the first day backfired. A blind man could see their incompatibility as they lost both times before being belatedly split up.

In women’s golf, Annika Sorenstam continued to dominate the LPGA, winning the money title for the fourth straight year. But she began the year by declaring her goal to be the Grand Slam, so eight victories in 18 starts, including one major, didn’t seem particularly special.

In the larger LPGA picture, 2004 also saw the continuing trend of South Korean domination, with four of the top 11 players on the money list hailing from that relatively small golfing nation.

Thankfully, the trend of women playing in men’s events so evident in 2003 largely ended - with one notable exception. Michelle Wie contested her hometown Sony Open in Hawaii, and the 14-year-old came within a shot of making the cut, thanks largely to brilliant putting.

Wie is returning in January for another crack at the men. But it seems that with rare exceptions, the novelty of women competing against men has worn off.