B’desh’s Ripon tops leaderboard as 26 qualify for Q School final stage

By Rahul Banerji

Bangladesh’s Mohammad Ripon (73, 72) led the way with a 1-over-145 at the end of round two of the PGTI’s pre-qualifying I for the 2019 season being held at the Kensville Golf & Country Club near Ahmedabad on Sunday.

From a total field of 99 in pre-qualifying I, 26 players went through to the final qualifying stage as eight players were tied for 19^th place when the cut fell at 9-over-153.

Ripon, overnight fourth and two off the lead, made a birdie and a bogey in round two to go two shots clear at the top.

Amateur Manpreet Mann (72, 75) of Noida and Chandigarh’s Ravi Kumar (72, 75) took a share of second place at three-over-147.

Kolkata’s Imran Ali Mollah and Pintu Haldar of the Noida Golf Course were tied fourth at four-over-148.

Woodland stays in lead

In Hawaii, overnight leader Gary Woodland stayed ahead of the field in the Sentry Tournament of Champions on Saturday with a 5-under 68 to move to 17 under and a three-shot lead over Rory McIlroy (-14, 69, 68, 68).

Aussie Marc Leishman climbed two places to third on the leaderboard on 13 under (68, 70, 68) a shot ahead of Xander Schauffle and Bryson DeChambeau while 2017 winner Justin Thomas and first day leader Kevin Tway shared sixth place on 10-under 209s.

Woodland (67, 67, 68) has led the field after three days six times in the past but failed to convert those into wins, and is determined not to repeat history, reports pgatour.com.

Lessons learnt?

“I think the difference is I’m a completely different player than I have been in the past. I’ve obviously been in the position multiple times. It’s nice to build off those and take certain things out of them,” he said.

“But it’s nice playing with Rory, because one he plays really quick, we hit it similar distances so we can club off each other. And he’s a great guy so that definitely helps tomorrow.

“Tomorrow I’ve got to go out and play aggressive. I’m playing well enough where I don’t have to play conservative. I can attack and continue to trust what I’m doing and should be good.”

For McIlroy, it is an opportunity to make up for a relatively poor 2018 season where he led on the penultimate day more than a few times with little success.

“Another final group is great. Especially coming off the back of not being able to play as well as I would have liked in final groups last year,” McIlroy said.

“So to get myself right back in contention and see if I’ve learned anything from last year and try to put that into practice is great. Every time you tee it up you learn something new, you learn something different, and you try to implement that into the next time you play. And I feel like I learned a lot from last year.”

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