Thailand’s Itthipat holds early lead in truncated Panasonic opener

By Rahul Banerji

Thailand’s Itthipat Buranatanyarat led the way on a smog-hit opening day of the $400,000 Panasonic Open India at the Classic Golf and Country Club near Gurgaon on Thursday with an impressive 8-under par 64 with only half the field able to tee off on the day.

With poor visibility and weather conditions delaying start by four hours and 10 minutes, players finally reached their opening tees only at 11 am, leaving 66 players in the clubhouse, including defending champion Khalin Joshi and Classic International winner here six weeks ago, Rory Hie.

Four tees were put to use, the first and sixth on the Classic’s front nine, and the 10^th and 15^th tees on the back nine in an effort to beat the possibility of failing light further cutting into the already curtailed time available.

Home challenge

Four Indians were lined up three shots behind the clubhouse leader including 2017 winner Shiv Kapur, Arjun Prasad, M. Dharma and Shankar Das, all bunched together in shared third place on 5-under par 67s.

Of them, Kapur, Dharma and Das returned bogey-free cards on the day.

Danny Masrin of Indonesia (-6, 66) was in sole second place while Hung Chien-yao of Chinese Taipei was the sixth member in tied third place alongside the big Indian presence.

Though it has not been announced officially, this is likely to be yet another truncated Panasonic Open India after 2016 when Mukesh Kumar emerged an unexpected winner thanks to continuing visibility issues thanks to fog at the Delhi Golf Club.

Viraj Madappa and young Aadil Bedi, who was almost laid low by a bout of fever overnight, were next beat in tied 11^th at 3-under par 69s alongside Arjun Atwal.

Late birdie

Jeev Milkha Singh hauled himself up the leader-board at 2-under 70 and a share of 20^th place with a late birdie while Jyoti Randhawa, playing in a landmark 300^th Asian Tour event was level par 72 in tied 33^rd place.

Said Kapur later on the late start, “Obviously it is unnerving, but don’t think it’s the first time this has happened. Have played golf enough to know this can happen, like the Singapore Open where you do a lot of sitting around or the Maybank when there is a lot of waiting during the rain delays so it’s kind of similar.

“We all managed to entertain ourselves quite well in the morning, Jeev, Jyoti, Arjun, myself, Siddharth Semwal was doing card tricks for us, and was quite an entertaining morning.

“We did make the most of it but when but obviously when it’s time to play you have to get ready and it is an adjustment. At such times, it is tough to get into any kind of rhythm and into any kind of frame of mind but they (the Asian Tour) did a good job of keeping us informed on the delays, and there wasn’t much uncertainly.

Caught napping

“I was a little but surprised that they took a call to give us a day off tomorrow. I wasn’t expecting that at all and from the look of it, this will be a three-round tournament and not a four-round event so when you tee up on the first tee, it’s more like a sprint rather than a marathon and you know you need to get off to a good start.

“That’s kind of like a mental adjustment where you need to get going from the very first round.”

Added Prasad: “I’ve had an ordinary season this year so I’m glad to shoot a low number after a long time. I set up some birdie opportunities on the front-nine but couldn’t capitalise on them until the ninth.

Four on the run

“I got on a roll from the ninth hole onward as I sank four birdies on the trot. The best of the lot was the birdie on the 10^th where I hit a fantastic shot from the fairway bunker, 130 yards out, to land it within a couple of feet of the flag.

Itthipat, who was close to the lead through the early part of the round, finally broke away with a run of birdies between his eighth and 13^th holes after starting from the sixth tee.

An eagle with three holes to go gave him further impetus and the rest of the field has some catching up to do, both in the remainder of the first round on Friday, as well as in Saturday’s second round.

Also read: Panasonic Open India moves to Classic GCC