Jyoti coming into his own groove

Jyoti, despite his putts slipping out thrice, managed to be “consistent”, as he said later. “I was concentrating — careful off the tee, aggro, if necessary, later.” The greens were playing true to their mischievous form.

Many Indians were, too. A piece of interesting statistic emerged from the third round. Hole 18 was double bogeyed and more seven times today, all by Indians. Kahlon tripped there, the double (lost in the bush, then two putting) bogey setting him back to eight under 208. Ashok Kumar faltered, Vinod Kumar was thwarted and so was Rahul Ganapathy, Rafique Ali, Mohammad Salim and Gurbaaz Mann, who all had a miserable day.

Many levels of the money round fluctuated wildly. Arjun Atwal was over par as the “rust caught up with me”, finishing the day at 73 and slipping to toed 20th.

But eyes are now on Randhawa, especially because he is now “relaxed” after having started off “tense and wanting to prove things.”