ROSE HALL, St James — There are high hopes that Jamaica will soon reclaim their regional dominance in golf with expectations that they will improve on last year’s fifth place at the 2013 Caribbean Amateur Golf Championships top be held in St Thomas, US Virgin Islands, August 5-11.

A number of the invitees to the national team that will be selected after the June 6-9 National Trials to be held at the Caymanas Golf and Country Club were in Montego Bay last weekend for practice sessions at the Cinnamon Hill course in Rose Hall.

Brian Roper, team manager, was in an upbeat mood when he spoke with the Jamaica Observer. “The team spirit is very high,” he said.

Roper said this team was expected to be full of “talented players from top to bottom” and were fine-tuning their game and were expected to be in top form for the Championships.

Jamaica dominated the regional championships in the 1970s and 1980s but has seen Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Trinidad taking over. Roper said with about six golfers attending colleges in the United States and playing golf “almost every day”, the pendulum was shifting back in Jamaica’s favour.

The championships will see five different categories — the Hoerman Cup, Ramon Baez Cup, Francis and Steele-Perkins Trophy, Higgs and Higgs Cup and George Teale Trophy.

A release from the Jamaica Golf Association yesterday said over 40 of the island’s top golfers had been invited to take part in the National Trials for a chance to be considered for selection to the team.

“The selectees have been called to an elite squad that has been in training since the beginning of the new tournament year, which commenced in April,” the release said.

The invitees are also expected to take part in the “top-billed 54-hole Seafreight National Amateur Golf Championships, which will take place over the Labour Day weekend”.

Among the invitees are past Hoerman Cup team members Ian Facey, Paul Thompson and Jonathan Newnham. Seasoned competitors include Sean Morris, Keith Stein, JGA president Wayne Chai Chong, Rory Jardine, Dennis Atkinson, Fred Sutherland and Jodi Munn Barrow.

Newcomers to the Trials include Lindell Bartley, Christopher Clarke, Geoffrey Chong and Easton Williams. Junior golfers slated to compete are Sandals-based Zandre Roye, Tiana Cruz, Kei Harris and Sherisse Walker, the release stated.