Viraj Madappa leads in Bengaluru

Edited by Anand Datla

Bengaluru, December 2: On a sunny Bengaluru morning, Viraj Madappa continued his rich vein of form to emerge the sole leader with a score of three-under par 69 at the end of first round of stroke play of the prestigious Tata Steel 114th Amateur Golf Championship Of India being played here at the Par-72 Karnataka Golf Association.

The trio of Yashas Chandra of Mysore, Noida’s Samarth Dwivedi and local lad Trishul Chinnappa are a stroke behind the leader at two-under par 70 followed by India International Aman Raj and Gurgaon based a further stroke behind as they finished as the only players with red digits.

In the International Team Event, it was India ‘C’ on top with the help of Samarth Dwivedi’s 70 and Arjun Sharma’s even par 72. India ‘B’ of Pratap Atwal (75) and Aman Raj (71) are four strokes behind in second place followed by India ‘A’ of Udayan Mane and Simarjeet Singh, who also shot a four-over 76, eight strokes behind at 152. The team from Sri Lanka are a further three strokes behind at 155.

The All India Junior Boys Champion Viraj, aiming to emulate Chikka Rangappa in holding both National titles at the same time, began from the 10th tee. He opened with four straight pars before sinking in a birdie 4 on the 14th hole. He took the turn at one-under par after another set of four pars. Being just short of the green on the 1st hole, he made an up and down from there to go two under and gained more strokes on the par 4 3rd hole and Par 5 5th hole. He dropped his only stroke of the day when he made heavy weather of a two-footer on the 6th hole. He made clutch putts on the next three holes to hold on to his one stroke advantage.

“A one stroke lead is never enough for such a high quality field but I’ll take it.” Said Viraj. He added, “The three putt on the 6th was unfortunate but overall I’m feeling great about my game.”

Home favourite and India no. 1 amateur labored to a four-over par 76 which included a very uncharacteristic two triple bogeys on the par 4 2nd hole, where he found the hazard off the tee and made a mess of his flop shot from over the green, and the Par 5 11th hole on which his low tee shot hit a tree and went out of bounds.

Top Scores (after 18 holes):

Individual:

69 Viraj Madappa; 70 Yashas Chandra, Samarth Dwivedi, Trishul Chinnappa; 71 Kushal Singh, Aman Raj; 72 Arjun Sharma, Rayhan Thomas; 73 Pukhraj Singh Gill, Harimohan Singh, Shivam Tibrewal, Vikram Rana, Tapendra Ghai, Feroz Singh Garewal, Akshay Maliwal

International Team Event:

142 India ‘C’; 146 India ‘B’; 152 India ‘A’; 155 Sri Lanka