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Journalism of Courage
BANGALORE, February 11: Jyoti Randhawa of Meerut and Arjun Singh of Delhi shared the opening day’s honours of the Classic Masters golf tournament at the Classic-Karnataka Golf Association course here on Wednesday. Randhawa and Arjun ended the day with a three-under par score of 69 to jointly lead the list of 98.
Favourite Arjun Atwal of Calcutta shared the second position with Delhi’s Vivek Bhandari, who is ranked second on the Order of Merit and Chandigarh’s Amritinder Singh, with a two-under score of 70. The other golfers to record sub-par scores on the day were Calcutta’s Uttam Singh Mundy and Lucknow’s Bhoop Singh with scores of 71 on the 72-par-course.
The lone Indian to play in the British Open, Gaurav Ghei, led a bunch of six golfers who achieved par scores. Vijay Kumar returned a 76 (+4), while Basad Ali, registered a score of 74, a position he shared with twice-Indian Open champion Ali Sher.
The 25-year-old Randhawa began with an impressive four under on his outward journey with an eagle on thefifth, which was well supported by birdies on the second, seventh and the ninth hole, thus wiping out the deficit of the bogey on the fourth. His return journey started off well with a par on the 10th. But two successive bogeys on the 11th and 12th curbed his ambitions.Randhawa reached the green of the 360-yard 12th hole in his second shot itself, but three-putted before sending the ball in. However, he accomplished par scores on all the next holes to finish the day on a score of 69.
Arjun, 28, who finished joint runner-up at the BPGC-ANZ Grindlyas Open at Mumbai last month, played consistently till the last hole totalling sub-par scores on both the journeys. He started sedately, with par scores on first four holes before a birdie on the fifth. He satiated his hunger for birdies on ninth, 11th and the 14th holes to total 34 on his onward journey.
Top pros: Arjun Singh and Jyoti Randhawa 69 each (-3), Vivek Bhandari, Amritinder Singh and Arjun Atwal 70 each (-2), Bhoop Singh and Uttam Singh Mundy 71each (-1), J Nigde, Mohd. Islam, Akbar Ali, Gaurav Ghei, SSP Chaurasia, Sanjay Singh 72 each (0), Anil Samantha, Sanjay Kumar, N Srinivasan, Shiv Prakash and Feroz Ali 73 each (+1), Indrajit Bhalotia, Jumman, Basad Ali, Ali Sher, Rajesh Chaudhary and Manish Bindra 74 each (+2).
Top five amateurs: Gaurav Dewan 75, Amitabh Poddar 79, David D’Souza 80, Roger Binny and Manu Moola 81 each.
