Bagalana, a golfing rugger fulfilling a family legacy

It’s a breezy Wednesday morning at the Uganda Golf Club, Kitante, where the amateurs are teeing off for the 79th edition of the Tusker Malt Uganda Open. 

A familiar bulk figure of a lad in the body of an imposing man emerges from a distance, clad in a red Polo tee and pink shorts armed with his club ready to strike the golf ball. 

A closer look reveals it is Tawfiq Bagalana, usually seen in the white, yellow and black stripes of Jinja Hippos Rugby Club. 

 Known for running over opponents with the egg shaped ball tucked away in his hand, seeing him swap the pitch for the course was hard to digest. 

The two sports are different in a number of aspects with a few parallels. Born in 1999 into a Jinja sporting family with cricketing father, Suleiman Bagalana, Tawfiq has had role models to look up to. 

 A family of siblings who all bear a sport-ing background partly explains why Tawfiq plays rugby, golf and tennis at the top level.  The Bagalanas; Abbey, Hussein, Ibra, Ashraf, Aziz, Ayma, Jamal, Meddie and Shamim, all share a common denominator away from the fam-ily  name  sport is the drug.

“It’s a long story but I can try to make it short,” says Taw-fiq, when asked how being part of a sporting family has helped shape his path. 

“We  call  our-selves the B Foundation and have al-ways inspired each other and many other people. We all try our best to learn and work hard to lift each other up,” explains the big lad. For Tawfiq, it’s the family chemistry instilled by his father that has ensured none is left be-hind.

 Its golf, rugby, cricket, tennis and football, the household has the capacity to hold its own sports gala.  Away from sports, Hussein is a music artist with Y Wonder as his stage name while Shamim is a dancer.

It’s hard to come by a 7-year-old playing golf in Uganda but thanks to his supporting cast, the golf swing had become a familiar routine for Tawfiq at the same age in 2006. “I started playing golf at the Jinja Golf Club when I was seven years old,” he recalls.  He  would  add  rugby  to  his sporting cart a year later as the Jinja rugby and golf clubs are a stride apart.

 “In 2007, I started playing rugby at Dam Waters. The tag rugby foundation visited and I joined without hesitating,” says Tawfiq, who has found his way through the ranks in both sports.

At 21, his expedition looks just fine. He has represented  Uganda 2018 Safari Sevens in Nairobi  with the  Rugby  Sevens Cranes. He has played at the East Africa games in Burindi with the same side, been part of the National Sevens Rugby academy. 

The 2019/2020 Nile Special had the Covid-19 pandemic cut it short but the youngster  was  turning heads at inside centre with Jinja Hippos. Voted the club’s most valuable player of the season and making the competition’s team of the year, Tawfiq is a prodi-gy in the making. No wonder there is cor-ridor talk of bigger clubs pursuing his sig-nature. 

He is in safe hands with Rugby Cranes coach Robert Seguya, the same man in charge at Hippos. In February, Tawfiq was his usual destructive self against Impis in the league with two tries that got him the man of the match gong. “He has everything he needs to become one of the best in is position. He will only get better with time and I will do all I can to help him get there,” said Seguya, one of the best to coach and play the game in Uganda, after that win against Impis. 

Seguya’s approval is never easy to ar-rive at which implies Tawfiq deserves the plaudits. At golf, the right hander who started at handicap 17 has made it to handi-cap three in a short time. 

It has all come with triumphs in different categories at Mbale Open, Eskom Open, Tororo Open and Mbarara Open among others. The concluded Uganda Open in which he debuted, Tawfiq grossed 342 to tie with Baryamujura Moses in 58th position out of 93 places. It was not a bad re-turn for a rookie at Uganda’s grandest golf competition. 

 “It was my first Uganda Open I really didn’t perform well but next year should be better, I hope to be among the title challengers. My only issue was the greens were different from the ones I’m used to,” says Bagalana, who targets joining the golf national team set up after getting taste of national duty in rugby.

 “The golf national team  coach has called me to go for the trials because he has seen potential in me , I want to achieve more from golf and  become a professional golfer after playing for the national team,” Tawfiq dreams on joining his brothers Abbey and Hussein who are basking in the professional ranks. Tawfiq could be on card for both national teams in 2021. He is in good books with both national team tutors.

“ I have plans of making to the 15s national team because coach has called me this year but Covid -19 happened. I want to do my best to represent Uganda in both sports,” promises Tawfiq.