With the SportExcel National Junior Golf Circuit making a welcome return this week, Jonathan Ponniah spoke to SportExcel Chairman Tunku Tan Sri Imran ibni Almarhum Tuanku Ja’afar to find out how it all began and what continues to drive him

More than three decades ago, SportExcel Chairman Tunku Tan Sri Imran ibni Almarhum Tuanku Ja’afar saw a gap in sports development in Malaysia.

To plug that gap, Tunku Imran formed the National Foundation for Sporting Excellence, the full name of SportExcel, in 1991. The rest, as the rather clichéd but nonetheless apt saying goes, is history.

“We looked at the whole scene and I saw that in Malaysia, we only played lip service to junior development and junior programs. To the extent that all the national associations just staged national championships, and some of them didn't even have age groups,” recalled Tunku Imran, whose chequered career in sports administration included stints as President of the World Squash Federation, Olympic Council of Malaysia and Commonwealth Games Federation. He was a member of the International Olympic Committee from 2006 to 2018 and, following mandatory retirement at age 70, was elected as honorary member in 2019.

A former competitive squash player who was national champion in 1973, Tunku Imran noted that most Western countries had age group events across all sports even back then. While attending school in the United Kingdom, much of his holiday time was spent competing in squash events.

“I realized that how I got better was the amount of competitive squash I played, and not the amount of training I did. So I said to myself, well, let's start a foundation for sporting excellence, looking at the elite players,” he said.

“We started with golf and squash, and then we went on to bowling, and from there into other sports, working with the national associations.”

Rather than rely on government funding, Tunku Imran decided to put together a structure that would be self-sufficient and – more importantly – cultivate good governance. With the support of like-minded individuals like Datuk Dina Rizal, then the Sports Marketing Manager for Nestlé Malaysia, the foundation grew steadily.

“I decided to look at the structures and create checks and balances, as I didn't want the foundation to go off the rails with just one person being key,” he explained “That's why we had a governors’ level and then a board level. And the other thing I said was, this has to be lean and mean because all the money we raise has got to go down to the actual activity.

“Rather than having to go around every year trying to get sponsors for tournaments, I said to myself, let's get charter members who pay X amount a year, and it will be tax exempt. Eventually as we got bigger, Milo – through Datuk Dina – decided to get more branding and became a partner, and then MSN (Majlis Sukan Negara) saw that this was something worth supporting, and they joined in a special category as partner … and that’s what they are now.

“We also structured things so that individual tournaments or sports can be sponsored, so AmBank came in for the grand finals and international junior championships for golf, and now send Yayasan Sime Darby has thrown in their support in a big way for female athletes in squash, tennis, swimming and BMX cycling.”

Today, SportExcel supports elite development in no less than 13 sports and continues to run the national junior golf circuit. Among the prominent Malaysian athletes who have gone through the SportExcel ranks are squash legend Datuk Nicol David, bowling queen Shalin Zulkifli, swimmer Jeffrey Ong, cyclist M. Kumaresan and, in golf, Ben Leong and current national No 1 Gavin Green.

“Although we have grown, the structure is still the same, the objective is still the same, and the expenses are still the same – it’s one executive director and maybe now two staff to help. That's about it, and the rest are volunteers,” stressed Tunku Imran.

One of SportExcel’s more recent progressions is providing international exposure for elite athletes through sponsored overseas training stints and tournaments, epitomised by the foundation’s involvement in the Asia-Pacific Junior Golf Series where reciprocal arrangements allow selected juniors to travel to countries like Japan, China and Taiwan to compete. While these have been curtailed by the Covid-19 pandemic and travel restrictions, the impetus is there and ready to resume when borders re-open.

Tunku Imran noted that Southeast Asian nations should help each other get better. “Take squash for example – Malaysia competes at the world level there but we should be carrying our Southeast Asian neighbours with us. In the end, if we create a healthy sports culture together, then we'll all grow together. We shouldn't be jealous of each other.”

While the last two years have been tumultuous for sports, one thing has remained constant – the drive of SportExcel’s founder and leader.

“It's my love for sport that brought me into SportExcel and kept me in SportExcel, and keeps me working at it, to improve SportExcel in every way.”

And that’s good news for Malaysian sports.