Sharma eases to
Shubhankar Sharma came through at his home course to bag the prestigious TAKE Open Golf Championship 2017 at the Chandigarh Golf Club on Sunday. The Asian Tour regular, posted a five-under-67 in the Round Four to overcome a twoshot overnight deficit and end with on 12-under-276 at the `1 crore event.
Patna’s Aman Raj, overnight leader by a stroke, carded a oneunder-71, to finish two shots behind the winner at 10-under278. Chandigarh’s Akshay Sharma (71) was third at nineunder-279.
Shubhankar (68-70-71-67), lying overnight third, managed to turn it around on the final day sinking seven birdies at the cost of just two bogeys. Shubhankar, who has five top-5 finishes on the Asian Tour, had a poor start as he three-putted the opening hole for a bogey.
The 21-year-old then got his new putter to work immediately, making three birdie, which got him back in the mix. Shubhankar then took control on the back-nine with a run of three birdies against a bogey.
Even as the challenge from Raj and Akshay faded away, Shubhankar knocked in a 25footer for birdie on the 18th to seal his fifth title on the PGTI and a winning cheque of `15 lakh. “I made an important change to my game today by changing my putter before the round. The new putter really helped my cause in the last round,” Shubhankar said.
“I started poorly but told myself to just keep creating birdie opportunities and the putts will drop. I bounced back well with crucial birdies on second and third that helped me claw my way back from a threeshot deficit.
“The win gives me loads of confidence to go and do the same on the Asian Tour. I think if I can play the same way on the Asian Tour, my game is good enough to win there as well.”
Raj (73-67-67-71) held on to his lead on the front-nine but still fell well short of the rampaging Shubhankar’s total. It was Aman’s second runner-up finish of the season which pushed him up from 15th to seventh place in the PGTI Order of Merit.
“My hitting was solid once again but I paid the price for missing a lot of putts today. Whenever I missed the green, I couldn’t make the chip-putts. But I’ll take a lot of positives from this performance since it gets me in contention in the PGTI Order of Merit race,” Raj said.
Akshay (71-68-69-71), who was overnight second, slipped to third on Sunday after a round of 71 that saw him make four birdies against three bogeys.
Karandeep Kochhar (70), the 18year-old rookie from Chandigarh took joint fourth place at eightunder-280 along with Bengaluru’s Khalin Joshi (69).