By Rahul Banerji
With their Presidents Cup hopes slowly disappearing over the horizon, Anirban Lahiri and Shunhankar Sharma team up for the Zurich Classic of New Orleans team event at TPC Louisiana come Thursday.
Last week, Lahiri tweeted a combo shot of the two in which he said, “One week to go before @TeamIndiatees it up @ZurichClassic. Excited to be partnering the prodigy @shubhankargolf as the desi boys take on the best in the world. #currypower#GoIndia.”
On the Presidents Cup front, the number of internationals pressing their claims has grown by the week and most lately it was Asians Li Haotong and C.T. Pan, one of China and the other from Chinese Taipei, who have found themselves in the winner’s circle.
The Australians, South Africans and Canadians too are making strong pitches to be picked for Ernie Els’ team that takes on the Tiger Woods-led USA in Australia at the end of the year.
Big rewards
Given all that, the Zurich Classic is a rare chance for India’s two top golfers to pair up. The rewards are mouth-watering, to say the least; a million plus dollars in individual earnings, a rich haul of FedEx Cup points, two-year PGA Tour exemptions, exemptions into next month’s PGA Championship, the 2020 Sentry Tournament of Champions, the 2020 Players and other invitationals, etc etc.
You get the point.
They will be up against 158 other top-notch professionals (80 pairs) with the top 35 and ties making the cut for the final two rounds. This means pressure from the very first tee shot of the Zurich Classic, though the format helps somewhat.
Format of play
According to the PGA Tour website, rounds 1 and 3 wil be played on a four-ball best-ball basis and rounds 2 and 4 as foursomes, ie, alternate shots.
In the foursomes, players rotate tee shots. One player tees off on the odd-numbered holes, and the other on even-numbered holes. They then alternate shots till the ball is holed and the total strokes taken will be the team’s score for that hole.
In the four-balls, players only use their own ball throughout of the round, with the best score on each hole recorded per team. In other words the better score by team pair gets into the scorecard.
At last year’s tournament on the 7,425-yard par-72 course, Billy Horschel and Scott Piercy beat Jason Dufner and Pat Perez by one stroke for the honours. This year, the third edition of the current format will see almost the entire top tier of ranked players in action.
In the starting field,each of the top available players from the PGA Tour Priority Rankings who commits to the tournament chooses a partner, who in turn must have PGA Tour status unless he is chosen as a tournament sponsor exemption.
Prominent pairings
Justin
Rose/Graeme McDowell; Adam Scott/Jason Day; Sergio Garcia/Tommy Fleetwood;
Louis Oosthuizen/Charl Schwarzl; Jim Furyk/David Ducall; Steve Stricker/Jerry
Keppy; Davis Love III/Dru Love; Brooks Koepka/Chase Koepka; Bubba Watson/J.B.
Holmes
Jason Kokrak/Chris Stroud; Branden Grace/Justin Harding;
Russell Knox/Brian Stuard; Anirban Lahiri/Shubhankar Sharma,
Also read: Lahiri makes solid Valspar recovery to set up Indian Open run
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