Sprightly Kapur shines bright

Gurugram, November 16

Shiv Kapur carded a second straight 5-under 67 to grab a share of the three-way lead at the Panasonic Open India golf, which saw four Indians feature in the top-10 here today.

Giving Kapur company in the top-10 were Rashid Khan (67-70), S Chikkarangappa (69-68) and Vikrant Chopra (67-70), all at 7-under and tied-6th place.

Though play began at 7am for the first time this week, the tournament has been reduced to 54 holes due to severe smog earlier this week. The third and final round will be played from two tees. The cut fell at 1-under, with 67 players making it, of which 30 were Indians. At the end of the day, Kapur at 10-under shared the lead with two Australians — Adam Blyth (71-63) and the seasoned Terry Pilkadaris (68-66).

Siddikur Rahman of Bangladesh, runners-up in this event three times, was bogey-free in his 67 and reached 8-under, two behind the leading trio. Also at 8-under was Taipei’s Hung Chien-yao (69).

“I played really well today. Conditions were tough, it was really, really greasy. The conditions were very different to how they were on Thursday. I had really good control over the ball, hit it beautifully all day. It was always going to be tough to make a lot of birdies but I seemed to come out of firing,” Kapur said. The 37-year-old birdied the third, fourth, sixth and seventh holes. He again had a birdie on the ninth after a bogey on the eighth. On the back nine he birdied the 13th and parred all others.

Blyth has been playing on the Asian Development Tour this year and till last year was dividing his time between Asian, ADT and Australasian Tours. He won twice in Australia in 2016. He had a great front nine with four birdies and he got hot on the back nine with a 5-under 31. “I’ve been playing well lately and it was fantastic to see the putts going in today. In the middle of my back nine, I got hot and went on a birdie run and,” said Blyth. 

Meanwhile, Pilkadaris also made four birdies. The big positive for the Australian was that he did not drop any bogeys. “It was very windy out there today with lots of cross winds which made scoring difficult. But I played nicely, bogey-free, so no complaints,” said Pilkadaris. — PTI

Panasonic open
Leaderboard

            Pos Player            Score

• T1 Adam Blyth            -10
• T1 Shiv Kapur            -10
• T1 Terry Plikadaris          -10
• T4 Hung Chien-Yao    -8
• T4 Siddikur  Rahman    -8
• T6 S. Chikkarangappa    -7
• T6 Vikrant Chopra   -7
• T6 Rashid Khan           -7