By Rahul Banerji
With a first top-10 finish in almost two years behind him from last week, Anirban Lahiri fired a bogey-free opening round at the Sanderson Farms Championship to sit in tied seventh place on Thursday.
Having taken a tied sixth place at the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship in the Dominican Republic, Lahiri was on point through the day in Jackson, Mississippi.
He will nwo want to build on this priceless momentum.
In all, the 33-yar-old had six birdies against no dropped shots at the Country Club of Jackson.
The Florida-based Lahiri hit 15 greens in regulation and converted birdie putts on the 3rd, 7th, 10th, 12th, 14th and 15th holes.
Singing putter
With his putter back on song again, he drained putts of 24 feet on the seventh hole and from 32 feet on the 12th hole.
“Obviously confidence is up. I feel like I’m playing really well,” Lahiri told the PGA Tour.
“I like this golf course. Last year was my first time here, and I really like the way it sets up. It reminds me a lot of the tracks I grew up playing in Asia.
“Conditions were great and I enjoyed myself out there,” added Lahiri, who had a T45 finish at the event last season.
Lahiri was two shots behind co-keaders Charley Hoffman, Kevin Chappell, Jimmy Walker and defending champion Sebastian Munoz – all with matching 64s.
For nearly two years, Lahiri lost some parts of his game but the extended Covid-19 enforced shutdown helped him out things together again.
He spent over a month working with his coach Vijay Divecha at home.
Rebuilt swing
Together, they dismantled his game and rebuilt the swing to ensure the fundamentals that helped him win seven times on the Asian Tour previously remained intact.
Now in his his sixth consecutive PGA Tour season, Lahiri is still looking for his first win.
“I’m just trying to stick to my process and check the boxes and be happy with that.
“The results are coming right now. I’m swinging it good, feel like I’ve got a good grip on my putter, which you need this week. So yeah, I’m in a good place.
“I feel confident. I guess it’s good to have that motivation to get to Vegas now, I guess, or maybe even better. So we’ll see,” said the two-time International Team member of the Presidents Cup.
“I think the lockdown really helped to start. I was in India for five months. I left pretty much the Monday after Bay Hill to go play the Indian Open, and then we got locked in.
“They closed the borders down. So I was there for a long time. Spent about 40 days straight with my coach before I came back out here.
Back to basics
“I got back to the basics, undid a lot of the bad habits that had crept into the game and just tried to clean up the game, clean up the mind and just get really — just prepare. So far so good,” said Lahiri.
He also spoke about the gamble from last week when he booked a seat on the PGA Tour charter to Jackson from the Dominican Republic without a confirmed berth.
A top-10 finish was the minimum and the Bangalorean duly took a share of sixth place at Corales Puntacana.
“Jackson isn’t exactly an easy place to get to, especially from the Dominican. Republic,” Lahiri told pgatour.com.
“I felt really good up in Napa (Safeway Open), had a horrific start and really fought my way back, played some quality golf after a long time.
“I felt like I could ride that momentum last week so I just had that feeling that if I go out there and do what I’m doing right now, I should get on that plane to Jackson. It paid off.”
Besides Lahiri, nine others had bogey-free opening rounds in Jackson.
Steady start for Shubhankar
At the Renaissance Club in North Berwick, Scotland, Shubhankar Sharma opened with a 1-under 70 at the Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open on Thursday.
Sharma, who is T39, had an early bogey but recovered some ground with a birdie each on either side of the turn.
The 24-year-old was nine shots behind first day leader Lee Westwood (9-under 62).
Gaganjeet Bhullar however, was still to settle in fully on return to Europe and had a 6-over 77 on day one two birdies, five bogeys and a triple.
According to the European Tour, Westwood carded two eagles in the space of five holes and added five birdies as the Rolex Series returned to The Renaissance Club.
The veteran Englishman was a shot ahead of Sweden’s Alexander Bjork and Joost Luiten of the Netherlands.
Also read: Lahiri gets going on Moving Day at Dominica event
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