Jeev, Jyoti headline
The second edition of the TAKE Open Golf Championship, scheduled at the prestigious Chandigarh Golf Club from Thursday, heralds the return of professional golf to Chandigarh after a gap of four years.
The 13th event of the 2017 PGTI season, will be Chandigarh’s biggest event in terms of prize money as the prize purse on offer is a whopping `1 crore.
The field will be headlined by Indian legends Jeev Milkha Singh and Jyoti Randhawa as well as other leading players such as Rashid Khan, Mukesh Kumar, Shubhankar Sharma, Khalin Joshi and Chiragh Kumar.
Besides Jeev, the presence of other Chandigarh-based golfers such as Sujjan Singh, Harendra Gupta, Abhijit Singh Chadha, Shubhankar Sharma, Angad Cheema, Karandeep Kochhar, Harmeet Kahlon, Amritinder Singh and Gurbaaz Mann, to name a few, lends the field a strong local flavour.
Interestingly, Jeev will be playing at his home course after a gap of over six years. He last played here during the PGTI Players Championship in March 2011 where he finished fifth.
The Chandigarh Golf Club was laid out in 1962 and is located just south of Sukhna Lake. The .7,202-yard, 18-hole, par-72 course is known for its tight fairways, which are lined by trees and thick roughs.
There are quite a few dogleg holes here, but none gives the players a chance to take the shortcut as tall trees almost always guard the corners. The club also possesses one of the longest par-5s in India, the seventh hole, which measures 613 yards.