Ho Chi Minh City – The Press Conference held on 12 December at Vietnam Golf and Country Club in Thu Duc has kicked off the first qualifying round of the prestigious MercedesTrophy 2010. This year, the tournament moves on to a larger scale with tremendous numbers of players and a series of interesting side activities. For the first qualifying round, the Vietnam best PGA player – Mr. Tran Le Duy Nhat will open the Tour with a drive from Hole # 8.

This year, the tournament has the increasing number of 17 golf clubs nationwide, 3 more compared to the 14 courses in the previous year. Considered the biggest and the most prestigious golf tournament in terms of large scale and organizing professionalism, MercedesTrophy this year has become larger and asserted its name in the Vietnam golf world.

Dr. Udo Loersch – General Director of Mercedes-Benz Vietnam said: "We are very delighted as receiving very good feedbacks from golf community in Vietnam for years. That's the encouragement for us to open the golf tournament on a much larger scale. This year, with the participations of more golf courses, we expected to attract over 3,000 golfers nationwide, more than the number of the previous year. Through this event, we want to bring an interesting golf playground to Mercedes-Benz customers and our to-be customers with a series of exciting side events and drive golf forward in Vietnam to a higher level."

10-15 outstanding golfers from each qualifying round will form a list of around 200 finalists to the Vietnam Final. Only 7 best golfers (6 men & 1 lady) among these 200 eligible to the Asian Final round in Australia in August 2010. Especially, this is the 20th year of the well-known Asian Final. The best Vietnamese amateur golfers finally represent the nation in the World Final in Stuttgart in September 2010.

With the expectation for a larger-scale and more exciting tournament, the organizer, Mercedes-Benz Vietnam has designed the MercedesTrophy as a weekend event by a series of side activities to attract many golfers. In addition, accompanying with this tournament is the participations of 3 sponsors: famous wine brand Johnnie Walker, prestigious Liberty Insurance and the world’s leading mobile device manufacturer Nokia.

First Vietnamese professional golfer Tran Le Duy Nhat also joins the tournament with an important role in the golf clinic. Golfers will have opportunity to discover a series of professional golf skills from this 20-year-old talent through exercises putting, swing, etc. Mr. Duy Nhat is known as the top-50-Asian golfer in the region and is currently the best PGA. His swing speed is said to reach to 126 miles per hour, which is almost the same as world’s No.1 Tiger Woods.
In addition, there will be a performance of a famous long-drive professional Jean Daniels with a trick demonstration and golf skill training on certain tournaments. Since 1997 he has been doing trick shot and long drive demonstration for over 300 different corporate and private companies around the world.

Besides the golf activities, Mercedes-Benz Vietnam also brings many of its top-of the-line models to the golf courses for exciting driving experience. On the tournament day at Thu Duc golf club on 12 December, over 300 golfers and journalists had chances to experience Mercedes-Benz latest models which have just been introduced in Vietnam like S300, E300 sedan, GLK 4MATIC, and especially the "greenest car" produced in Vietnam C250 CGI using BlueEfficiency technology. Legendary 1963 Mercedes 220 (w111), 1963 Mercedes 230sl (w113), 1965 Mercedes 220 S (w111) also joined the test drive. The past and present of cutting-edge technologies together relive a great innovation of German auto industry, adding more interesting atmosphere to the golf tournament.

2009 was a special year of MercedesTrophy as for the first time a Vietnamese golfer - Mr. Nguyen Quang Duc could pass over thousands of skillful players to win the Champion Team title at the MercedesTrophy World Final in Germany.
Mercedes-Benz’s involvement in amateur golf goes back to 1989. The first World Final was played in 1990 with 9 teams from 9 countries. Since then each year the MercedesTrophy attract more than 55,000 golfers in over 50 countries, all of them playing in national and regional tournaments in the hope of qualifying for the MercedesTrophy World Final.