By FELIX MALUNGA –

HOLDER Wallie Coetsee leads an array of five past winners who have signed up for next month’s prestigious Mopani Copper Mines/Redpath Mining Zambia Open Golf Championship in Kitwe.
Coetsee is among the 154 top campaigners on the Sunshine Tour who want to have a bite at Zambia’s flagship golf tournament which this year carries a $300,000 (about K2.1 million) prize tag.
Also returning to Nkana Golf Club is two-time winner Adilson Da Silva (2010, 2013), 2012 champion Justin Harding, Doug Mc Guigan who triumphed at the Zambia Open in 2011 and 1996 victor Desvonde Botes.
Other top contenders for the 2015 Zambia Open are last year’s hole-in-one sharp shooters, Allan Versfeld and Jaco Prinsloo.
At the 2014 edition at Nkana, Versfeld sunk a hole-in-one on number three to win himself a Jepp Cherokee while Prinsloo drove away in a Toyota Corolla 2014 edition after sinking the 11th from the tee box.
Zambia’s top players, Madalitso Muthiya and Dayne Moore including Bruce Chanda are the only local professionals who have so far indicated of their intentions at the richest-ever event on home soil set for Nkana on April 23-26.
Some of the players who will heading to Kitwe include Ulrich van den Berg, PH McIntyre, Nic Henning and CJ Du Plessis.
Meanwhile, 152 players have so far entered the 2015 Zambia Sugar Open slated for Lusaka Golf Club for April 30-May 3.
All the five past Zambia Open winners, who will signed up for the Open proper in Kitwe, will also participate in Zambia Sugar event including the three Zambians.
The Zambia Golf Union will soon announce the number of local players both professional and amateur to participate in the two international tournaments.