Viraj Madappa top seed for Amateurs

Edited by Anand Datla

Bengaluru, December 3: The seeding exercise for the match play round of Tata Steel 114th Amateur Golf Championship Of India was completed on a windy Wednesday at the Par – 72 Karnataka Golf Association and it was Kolkata teenager Viraj Madappa who goes into the brackets as the top seed with a gross score of four-under par 140.

Noida’s Samarth Dwivedi was seeded second two strokes behind at a gross of two-under par 140 followed by state-mate Harimohan Singh a further three strokes behind as the third seed and Gurgaon based Kushal Singh took the fourth spot on count back.

There was a thrilling five-way play-off for the final three places, which generated tremendous excitement amongst the crowd. Local lad Rahul Ravi and Md. Wasil booked two of those places with birdies on the first play-off hole leaving Kurush Heerjee, B. R. Raja and P. Mani to play further for the last remaining spot. P. Mani made a brilliant up and down on the 2nd hole of the golf course for par to tie with Kurush while B. R. Raja dropped out. A third play-off hole (9th of the golf course) was required to settle the issue as Kurush edged out Mani, who had found trouble off the tee.

“I’ve been on the top of my game lately, the win last week at Eagleton has given me enough confidence to go out and do the job this week.” Said the top seed Viraj.

He went on about his business in typical style as he birdied the 2nd hole. He dropped a couple of strokes on the 5th and 7th holes on his way to going out at one-over. Having stayed at that score for another five holes, he birdied 15th and 16th holes to go back to red digits for the day and finish one-under par 71.

In the International team event, the hosts’ team India ‘C’ comprising of Samarth Dwivedi and Arjun Sharma emerged as winners with a gross score of 290 followed by India ‘B’ of Pratap Atwal and Aman Raj at 297.

There are some very interesting matches on the cards when the match play begins on the morrow as defending champion Pratap Atwal taking on local lad Syed Saqib Ahmed in the marquee round of 32 clash. The other matches to watch out for are second seed Samarth Dwivedi and Rahul Ravi going head to head with the winner facing the potential of meeting the favourite Udayan Mane if he gets past veteran H. S. Kang.

Final Scores (stroke play):

Individual:

140 Viraj Madappa (69,71); 142 Samarth Dwivedi (70,72); 145 Harimohan Singh (73,72), Kushal Singh (71,74), Yashas Chandra (70,75), Trishul Chinnappa (70,75); 146 Devin Suri (76,70), Aman Raj (71,75); 147 Syed Saqib Ahmed (76,71), Jaibir Singh (76,71), Yash Jindal (74,73); 148 Tarak Swamy (76,72), Feroz Singh Garewal (73,75), Arjun Sharma (72,76)

International Team Event:

290 India ‘C’; 297 India ‘B’; 303 India ‘A’; 314 Sri Lanka