In form Aditi holds on to second spot after Day 3
Indian golfer Aditi Ashok carded a three-under 67 in the third round to hold on to the second position and remain in strong contention for the country’s maiden Olympic medal in the sport here on Friday.
The Bengalurean, who has her mother, Maheshwari, on the bag, shot five birdies against two bogeys and moved to 12-under, three strokes adrift of leader Nelly Korda of USA who carded a two-under 69 in the penultimate round.
Four players -- New Zealand’s Lydia Ko (66), Australia’s Hannah Green (67), Demark’s Kristine Pederson (70) and Japan’s Mone Inami (68) -- shared the third spot with totals of 10-under 203.
Aditi fired five birdies and two bogeys on the day. She was three-under after picking up shots on fourth, sixth and seventh holes before bogeys on ninth and 11th pulled her back. However, she made amends with birdies on the 15th and 17th to keep herself in the hunt for a historic medal. The other Indian golfer in fray, Diksha Dagar, remained in the lower half of the leaderboard after an erratic one-over 72, her third successive over-par card of the week.
Dagar, who started from the back-nine, managed one birdie against two bogeys in her round on Friday.
This is Aditi’s second Olympic appearance. She had finished tied 41st in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro edition. Aditi said since she played only a few tournaments in May-june and also got
I wasn’t as consistent. So, yeah, definitely it was a good day and I did not make as many bogeys as I could have,” she said.
“My putting wasn’t as good today as the first two days. So those couple par putts that were like the one on 12 and the one on 18, helped because I knew my putting wasn’t that good today compared to the first two.” Aditi said she recoeverd from COVID-19 but it did affect her health “It took a little bit of strength out of me. I was never this short. I was always short but not like 50 behind Nelly and 50 behind Nanna. But apart from the distance this year has been kind of the best I’ve had with my short game.” Aditi was also candid about the following golf back the Olympics. “And when the Olympics comes aroun always because we had a l sports where we were actu really good, like hockey, w we had, we used to win medals all the time.
“With golf being in (at Ol pics) the second time I t people are a lot more aware trying to follow it a lot mo The tournament faces poss interruption and the final ro could even be cancelled bec of the forecast of a trop storm on Saturday and ma even Sunday.
The organisers have bro forward the tee times for final round and have the op of playing on Sunday morni weather permits. They