Golf: Samarth Dwivedi goes low on day 1

Reigning All-India Amateur Champion Pratap Atwal shot the only other red figures of the day when he carded two-under-par 70 to be two strokes behind Samarth at the end of round 1. A further two strokes behind at even-par 72 are a quartet of players, including veterans Jasjeet Singh and GaganVerma tied for the fourth place.

Samarth, who teed off from the first tee, began with a bang by sinking consecutive opening birdies on the 1st and 2nd holes. He followed it up with a couple of pars before another set of back-to-back birdies to go four-under-par after six holes.  There was no blip on his scorecard as he rolled in a hat trick of pars to go out four-under-par 32. He began the back nine as he had started the front by making birdies on the 10th and 11th holes and added another on the par-3 15th hole to go seven-under par through 15 and looked set to go even lower. However, he finished bogey-double bogey and had to be contend with a round of four-under par.

Viraj, having been disappointed with his runner up finish last week, made five birdies and a double bogey on the par 5 14th hole to stay in contention a stroke behind at three-under-par 69. A three-putt bogey on the 9th put Pratap a stroke behind Viraj going into round 2 tomorrow.

“I was really hitting the ball well and felt a great rhythm in my swing today.” Said Samarth. He added, “ It would have been great to not have made mistakes on the 17th and 18th but I’m happy with my round and being the leader at the end of the day .”

Top Scores (after 18 holes):

68 Samarth Dwivedi; 69 VirajMadappa; 70Pratap Atwal; 72 Aalaap I.L., Jasjeet Singh, ZubinNijhawan, GaganVerma; 73 Pukhraj Singh Gill, Syed Saqib Ahmed, M. Kanishka Sinha; 74 Nikhil Shekhawat, Rajesh Gautam, Vinay Kumar Yadav, VikramRana, Jaibir Singh, VashishtaPawar, H. S. Kang; 75 Sudipta Das, Udayan Mane, Yuvraj Sandhu, VenkatGautham, Kushal Singh