By Rahul Banerji
With a sublime 7-under 65, defending champion Chikkarangappa S. took over the halfway lead in the Prometheus School Delhi-NCR Open at the Golden Greens Golf Club in Gurgaon on Wednesday.
The Bangalore golfer’s card was the day’s joint best and his 9-under par 135 aggregate gave him one-shot lead as cut fell at 1-over 145 with 56 professionals making the money rounds.
Gurgaon’s Tapy Ghai (67) and Harendra Gupta (70) of Chandigarh shared second place on 8-under-136 at the Rs. 30 lakh event.
Chikkarangappa (70-65), tied 12th and four off the pace, opened with a three straight birdies, the latter two being conversions from 12 to 15 feet.
Chikka, a winner of 14 titles, then recovered well after a bogey four with two more birdies before the turn.
The 27-year-old had an action-packed back-nine.
He dropped a double on 10 after finding the hazard twice but came back with birdies on the next two holes.
Chikka then ended the day in style with birdie-eagle 17 and 18. The 25-foot eagle conversion on 18 was his fifth long putt of the day.
Chikka said later, “I had a terrific start today and was stroking the ball well on the greens.
The putts rolled in consistently.
Keeping his cool
“I had a disastrous 10th hole but importantly kept calm and quickly got back into rhythm picking up a couple of strokes over the next two holes.
“My iron-play was much better today as compared to round one. One hardly finds a flat lie on the fairways at Golden Greens.
“Yesterday I had a tough time dealing with the lie on the fairways which have a lot of slopes. You can’t even see the fairway slopes from the tees here.
“Today, I figured out a few things about striking the ball from the slopes on the fairways.”
Ghai (69-67), tied eighth and three off the lead, had nine birdies and four bogeys in his round of 67 on Wednesday.
Ghai, a winner on the PGTI, made a chip-in on the third and landed it close on several occasions to set up his birdies during round two.
The 25-year-old said, “I was able to bounce back after almost every bogey that I made today. That kept the momentum going for me.
“I have good memories of Golden Greens having won my last amateur event here in 2017. So I’m quite comfortable with the layout here and therefore confident of playing well.”
Harendra Gupta (66-70), the round one joint leader, returned a 70 that featured three birdies and a bogey.
Late gains
He made some gains towards the end after making pars on his first 13 holes.
Chandigarh’s Ajeetesh Sandhu, the first round joint leader, slipped to tied fourth on 6-under-138 with a 72.
Bangalore’s Khalin Joshi, who also had a 65, was in tied fourth along with Ajeetesh, Pune’s Udayan Mane (67), Patna-based Aman Raj (66) and Gaurav Pratap Singh (68) of Noida.
Delhi’s Honey Baisoya, part of the three-way lead in round one, shot a 74 to drop to tied 12th on 4-under-140.
PGTI Order of Merit leader Karandeep Kochhar (69) of Chandigarh was alongside.
Rashid Khan (74) was a further shot back in tied 17th place.
Mohd Azhar from Vooty Golf County, Hyderabad, made a hole-in-one on the eighth during his round of 73.
However, he missed the cut on 6-over-150.
Also read: Delhi-NCR Open Golf C’ship tees off Tuesday with top field
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