Paris, Aug 26: The Indian trio of Avani Prashant, Smriti Bhargav and Nishna Patel returned modest cards to drop 10 places after the second round at the 29th Women’s World Amateur Team Championship for the Espirito Santo Trophy golf tournament here on Friday.
Avani, who at 15 is seen as the top player in the trio, shot 76 as against 77 in the first round and stood at 73rd place in the field.
Smriti (73-77) was T-84 and Nishna (77-77) was T-103rd.
Sweden’s Ingrid Lindblad, who is No. 2 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, fired eight birdies in her first 12 holes to post a six-under 65 at Le Golf National to pace her team into the lead through Round 2.
The Swedes also used a three-under 68 from Meja Ortengren for a day’s total of eight-under to lead Germany and first-day leader USA by two strokes at nine-under 277.
Lindblad, who shot a record 65 as the lowest score by an amateur in the first round at the 2022 US Women Open, had a bogey on the 15th and a double bogey on the 18th but her 65 tied for the third-best second round in Espirito Santo history and is the best round of the championship.
Lindblad is also the 2021 European Amateur champion who plays golf at Louisiana State University.
On Golf de Saint-Nom-La-Bretèche, the USA, who are defending champions from 2018, were led by Rachel Kuehn’s two-under 70 and an even par 72 from world No. 1 Rose Zhang, who were teammates in the USA’s last two Curtis Cup Match victories. (PTI)