Afternoon sun sends scores soaring on hot opening day at HIO 2019

By Rahul Banerji

It was a slaughter of the heavyweights on the opening day of the Hero Indian Open 2019 at the DLF Golf and Country Club in Gurgaon with only 44 professionals able to break par on a hit and sunny Thursday.

Scotland’s Stephen Gallacher set the pace in the morning with a 5-under par 67 that was matched only late in the day by New York City-born desi Julian Suri even as Shubhankar Sharma was virtually by himself in leading the home challenge on 3-under 69.

One last group, well out of contention,  will return on Friday morning to complete their first round.

Suri, who sports an eye-catching ash-blonde Mohawk haircut was one of a handful to master the difficult afternoon conditions and went from strength to strength. Five birdies and a bogey marked his outbound nine, and on his way back, the 27-year old picked up two further shots against one last bogey.

Delicate touch

Suri’s 18^th was a brave effort, hitting a long iron over water to find the greenside bunker. A delicate chip saw the ball roll to within a couple of feet for his final birdie of the day, and a share of the lead.

Of the other Indians in red figures, Rahil Ganjee was one back on 70 and the unheralded Om Prakash Chouhan the next best on 1-under 71.

Former winners Anirban Lahiri and S.S.P. Chawrasia – both making afternoon starts – struggled to come to terms with the Beast of the East,m as the DLF course has come to be known with 5-over (77) and 4-over (76) scores respectively.

Finding answers

Maybank Championship winner Scott Hend was on a tear in the morning with seven birdies in his first 13 holes before a bogey on 17 and a triple in the final hole dented his card.

Hend had said on Wednesday he was not sure how to approach the course but seemed to have found some answers on the day to sit alongside Sharma and seven others in shared third place..

Spain’s Pablo Larrazabal, a four-time winner on the European Tour, took a share of second place along with three others including Thailand’s Prom Meesawat on 4-under 68s and said he was pretty happy with the way his round had gone.

The 36-year-old, whose last win came almost four years ago at the BMW International Open (which he also won in 2011) at Munich in 2015, mixed an eagle and five birdies against three dropped shots on a day most players struggled to come to terms with the course and pin positions in particular.

Happy Pablo

“Five birds one eagle and three bogeys are pretty nice. I had a lot of patience out there today,” he said. “You know the bogeys are going to come on this golf course so yeah, I’m pretty happy with today’s round.”

Larrazabal is now an India veteran and on his seventh visit here. This is his third Hero Indian Open since 2016, besides which he has also played the Avantha Masters in 2013, 2011, 2010 and the Emaar MGF Indian Masters back in 2008, when he also won the Sir Henry Cotton rookie of the year award on the European Tour.

Incidentally, Shubhankar is the most recent winner of the award.

Currently 31^st in the Race of Dubai European Tour Order of Merit, Larrazabal said the DLF course demanded accurate play, which by and large he had managed. “I thought I played pretty well today. The key in this course is to keep your precision, keep it in the short grass and I did it very well.”

At the Hero Indian Open last year, Larrazabal finished fourth on 7-under par 281 behind winner Matt Wallace, Andrew Johnson and Sihwan Kim. It remains his best finish on Indian soil so far.

Also read: Hero Indian Open has desi flavours in more ways than one