Windfall awaits Honda-Siel champions

NEW DELHI, NOV 24: A fat cheque, the biggest on the Wills Sport Indian Golf Tour, and a spanking new car, which costs almost twice as muc...

NEW DELHI, NOV 24: A fat cheque, the biggest on the Wills Sport Indian Golf Tour, and a spanking new car, which costs almost twice as much as the winner8217;s purse of Rs 4,53,000 await the winner of the Honda-Siel PGA Championships which rolls out at the Delhi Golf Club greens for the first time in six years.

And fighting for it will be a big field which includes the DGC8217;s favourite son, Gaurav Ghei, and Amritinder Singh, who outduelled the former in the play-off at the Hero Open on his home turf in Chandigarh last week.

And the good news for the players is that the roughs this time will not be as high as they were during the Hero Honda Masters four weeks ago. But balancing that should be the greens, which according to some players, are not as fast they were last time.

The ninth event on the Tour has a good starcast despite the absence of Hero Honda Masters champ Jyoti Randhawa, Indian Open winner Arjun Atwal, Jeev Milkha Singh and Amandeep Johl, who have chosen to play the Hong Kong Open this week.

Giving Ghei and Amritinder a tough time will be Feroz Ali winner at Colour Plus who has recovered from a bout of fever, which forced him to skip the Pro-Am on Wednesday, and Mukesh winner at Wills Northern Open and TSM Open. And they all in turn will have to contend with two hungry men in hot pursuit, Arjun Singh and Vijay Kumar.

The field also has defending champion Uttam Singh Mundy, who had won the event in 1996 too, and the 1997 champion Vivek Bhandari.

Jeev joint 27th
Jeev Milkha Singh finished joint 27th in the Dunlop Phoenix Tournament in Japan last week. The Indian star carded rounds of 74, 70, 73 and 69 to aggregate 286 and earned 1,520,000 yen, which was approximately US 15,000. The event was won by Swede Thomas Bjorn who took the title and 40 million Yen, equivalent to about US381,000. Bjorn won the title in a play-off after he tied with Spaniard Sergio Garcia with 18-under totals of 270.