February 04, 2016: In her first day as a professional on the Ladies European Tour, Aditi Ashok shot one over par at the 13th Beach Golf Links in Victoria. The 17 year old Indian was lying T17 after sandwiching a birdie at the par-5 11th hole between bogeys at the 5th and 17th holes on the par-73 Beach Course.
Vani Kapoor and Amandeep Drall, the two other Indian golfers in the fray this week were relegated to T89 on the leader board after making similar scores of six over 79 in the first round of the Australian Ladies Professional Golf tour.
19 year old Englishwoman Georgia Hall shot her way into the lead with a brilliant 69 with eight women tied in second at one under 72. The group in second included five women from the host nation, Australia and one each from England, Denmark and France.
Kristalle Blum was the highest placed amateur in that group of eight after she made a fine effort on the first day, also playing on the Beach Course.
A further collection of seven women were lying together in tenth place after they made an even 73 on Thursday.
But the star of the day was Hall. “I love playing in Australia, it’s my favourite place to play” said the 19 year old, “Obviously I have good memories from Sydney and I love links golf so I feel very comfortable here.”
“The Beach course is a hard course and I think the better of the two courses. It was quite windy but obviously being from England I am used to the wind. It was at least three club wind at times but I played really solid golf and didn’t make many mistakes,” added Hall. “It was only 142 yards but straight back into the wind, I hit a really good punch 5 iron which I normally hit 175 yards to about 10 feet and made the putt.
“I’d be so happy to keep this going, particularly with so many amazing names like Laura and Karrie playing, but this is a really strong field with most of the top Australian players and also a lot of LET players playing.”
